September 8 (Wednesday): Forbidden City (故宮/紫禁城) & Nanluoguxiang (南鑼鼓巷)

Like most tourist the Forbidden City or the Palace Museum (故宮/紫禁城) is on the top of our list. Due to traffic control our taxi dropped us off miles from the main entrance around 10:30. As expected the place was totally filled with people except the areas where you’ve to pay extra entrance fee. For me I got no longer the nostalgic feeling when I visited the place thirty years ago. Perhaps my eyes might have broadened much more since then. At 14:30 we went to the Nanluoguxiang (南鑼鼓巷) in the vicinity which is not unlike Chengdu’s Broad & Narrow Lanes (成都寬窄巷子). We spent about 90 minutes there including a late lunch (salad & pizza @ 三棵樹).

In the evening we were treated to a hotpot dinner at Ding Ding Xiang or Hotpot Paradise (鼎鼎香) @ Shin Kwong Place (新光天地) by a high school classmate MC and his wife Carmen. It’s a very popular restaurant which doesn’t take advance booking. We thoroughly enjoyed the evening and the food. Afterwards we did some shopping at the Shin Kong Place Supermarket for fruit and pastries before heading back to Ascott.


Camera Equipment:
Camera: Nikon D3 & F6 plus Panasonic LX3
Lens: AFS 17-35/f2.8 (mostly on F6) and AFS 70-200/f2.8 (D3)
Singh-Ray Filters: i) Gold N Blue Polarizer, ii) LB Color Combo Polarizer, iii) Daryl Benson ND-3 Reverse Graduate and iv) Galen Rowell ND-3G Hard Step.
Film (for F6): 8 rolls of Kodak Ektar and 1 roll of Fujicolor – all 100 ISO

NB: Photos without metadata were taken by Nikon F6, the film camera