The Forbidden City was awe-inspiringly magnificent. See the
picture for an idea of the magnitutude of the place as Stu stares out across it!
It was a shame, but the smog has come in during the past couple of days, so
visibility in the city has deterioated.
New Experience of the day: Garden pea favoured ice cream,
apparently very familiar in these parts. After the initial surprise, it is quite
refreshing!
We went to Tianamen Square via Grandma's Kitchen (recommended by Lonely Planet - it turned out to be an style American diner), where there was plently to indicate that it was the 80th anniversary of Communism in China.
We met up with Eva at our "local". The staff fled for their
lives when I asked if we could have a photograph of them. After some persuasion
by the management, one of the blushing waitresses had her photo taken! This time
we stuck to safe vegetables (also helps that Stu is a veggie!)... or so we
thought - there was the odd bit of meat floating around in the vegetarian
food!
I do have to rave about the chillis in a lot of dishes.
Delicious, but sweat inducing. Huge chunks of fresh but sort of dried/grilled
chillis put a good fresh spiciness into many dishes we have had.
