Beijing: Forbidden City and other nearby things

I got up and ventured out on my own for my first day in Beijing--I usually like to keep to my feet on my first day in a new city, especially the larger, more overwhelming ones.  I have to be a bit more conscious about security in China--pickpocketing is much more rampant and scams abound.  I talked to a guy from Argentina last night who lost his wallet in the subway station.  I always keep my wallet in my front pocket, and most of my pants have zipper pockets anyway, but I'll put stuff I don't care about in other pockets.  As soon as I got to the street a policeman tugged on my shoulder and said something to me.  I shrugged, then he tugged at my back pocket--oh no--my tourist pamplet.  He laughed.

Our hostel was pretty close to the forbidden city and this park that has great views.  I visited both--they were cool.  Ok, they were very cool.  The park had amazing views, perhaps the best view of my trip, of the Forbidden City, and the Forbidden City was just incredible.  It had amazing open spaces.  Someone tried to scam me into going to an art show, but I took his picture instead and said I would be making my own art today.

this one is for all the Sanzaru Hacky Sackers.  You need to use the Birdly Hacky Sack.  It looks way cooler.

 Despite being a really cool place, I didn't exactly spend a lot of time there.  I wasn't very interested in the insides of the buildings at all--seemed like an assortment of pottery and other minor relics.  No dragon robots or Monkey King statues.

There was a bar attached to the hostel that most guests frequented.  I spent my afternoon there drinking TsingTao.   Finally, after 10 years, I found the true way to pronounce it: "Chin-Dao" (also the name of the city where it is made, but spelled different, hence the confusion).
I went with a 2 Aussies and a Brittish guy to dinner down there road.  Our road, also called Hutong, was a sort of popular tourist way, so most of the businesses cater to Westerners.  The place we went to was a little bit of an exception.  Although it had a menu the size of a phone book.  Our food was amazing, and it cost about 5 bucks a person.

There were tons of public bathrooms around, because most houses in this area (or maybe all of China--I'm not sure yet) don't have sewers, so they have public ones in the street.  Luckily our Hostel was an exception.