we went to see Tiananmen sq and the Forbidden city. Tiananmen sq is huge, it's hard to imagine the whole place full with a million people, which happened a few times in the past.The Forbidden city was basically a big playground for the emperors, which housed the empress and all the concubines plus staff and officials, revamped a few times in the past couple of hundred years, the quality of the halls, bedrooms and gardens are fairly amazing.When we got out we were hounded by rickshaw drivers, one managed to convince us to travel to the Shicha Hai district for food. He took us through a side street called hutong's which litter the city, we never heard of them and they can be really narrow barely enough for two bikes to pass, I was fairly worried he'd take us to some hatchet place, eating God knows what! The people living there are the locals in small one story houses one old fellow was sharpening a cleaver which unnerved us. After a bit we made it to the big open streets again and he left us off, (charging double the agreed price) but what else would you expect.The lake was lovely, peaceful except for those rickshaw drivers again. We had our grub and headed back to the hotel and booked a tour for the Great wall.