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| China 2019 - Forbidden City (Palace Museum) |
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My first full day in China was May 2nd and was in Beijing. May 1st was a national holiday, which should have had me touring the Forbidden City the day after a holiday, which is typically good timing when visiting usually crowded tourist spots. Unfortunately the Chinese government decided to restructure the work week and make it a 4 day holiday. So it turned out I was there on the 2nd day of a long holiday. So yeah, it was pretty crowded. Fortunately I had purchased my entry ticket on line before I left home. So I didn’t have to wait in the giant line to get a ticket.
I knew the palace grounds were very large, but I didn’t really grasp exactly how large. I had intended to spend a half day there then go to few other places. I ended up spending the entire day on the palace grounds. There was so much to see, and I didn’t even try to get into the 2 most popular exhibits. They each had over an hour long line. I ended up walking over 10 miles! The grounds are laid out in basically 3 rows, with the large main buildings you’ve seen in photos being on the central axis and then lesser shrines, gardens, and palaces paralleling the central path on each side. I found that most people tended to focus on the central row of buildings so you could actually get away from the crowds in some of the auxiliary buildings and courtyards. I also found them to be a bit more interesting anyway. But early on I decided to focus my photos more on small details and not worry about grand landscape type of shots. The only place the crowds really bothered me was in the garden at the north end. It’s the last section before you exit. It is a truly magnificent section, but was also so crowded photos were pretty pointless. I saw at least a dozen women in traditional dress doing what appeared to be low key photo shoots. I was also pleased to find that the tour groups were all using headsets to listen to the tour guide instead of the usual annoying bullhorn or small amplifier and microphone. I thought that was brilliant and I hope it becomes a more common trend world wide. Overall it was a remarkably impressive place and was the first of four bucket list items I checked on this trip. Unfortunately the photos taken here were the first and perhaps most significant victim of my failure to notice that the camera wasn’t capturing raw images. I just went about my happy way taking underexposed hand held shots in the dim exhibit halls. I’m quite sad about this. But I did have a splendid day regardless. |
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