Beijing, Day One - Pagoda and Hutong/Hou Hai Area

We crossed the street from The Forbidden City and climbed Jingshan hill to get to the pagoda at the top of this picture:

And I couldn't resist taking a picture of this girl posing for her mom:

View of The Forbidden City looking down the hill (and, yes, that's smog.  gross.):

Looking at the other side of the city, the Hutong Area:

The lake:

Caleb standing in the middle of Beijing!:

We came down the hill and found the tree, called the Guilty Chinese Scholartree, where the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty hanged himself to avoid being captured and executed. Read about the tree here.:

Levi was in a particularly bad mood this day, so I had to capture any picture of him smiling:

Family pic by the female lion (see the baby under her foot?):

Again with smiling Levi! A rare occurrence that day:

Hutong:

You can get churros in China!  They smelled sooooo good, but it wasn't worth the pain for me to eat one:

We ate at Hutong Pizza, which was really good:

And then I had to stop at Starbucks to get my Beijing coffee mug!

The Great Wall is next!