After waking up on Sunday I hopped in a taxi and headed to the center of Beijing. The taxi driver tried to trick me and take a super long route all the way to the north of the city before heading into the center which doubled the fare but I caught on so I only paid what the fare should have been since I knew from the previous day. I got dropped off near Tiananmen Square which unfortunately was shut down due to the newly appointed Chinese President holding political meetings in the area. The smog was rather bad which put a downer on the day and made it rather difficult to take good pictures. After walking around the shopping area to the south of Tiananmen Square I walked back up towards the imperial palace. On the way I passed at least a dozen security checkpoints where I had to show my passport due to the political meetings.
The imperial palace was huge! After walking through what I thought was the main area I came out of a small gate to the large main gate to the central palace. There were tourists everywhere. I ended up walking through the center of the palace, straight north. After checking out the palace I walked across the street to the Qingxiu Tea Garden which has a great view of the palace.
I ended up walking around a bit more and exploring, I could not find anyone that could point me in the right direction for other places to see so I headed back to the hotel. Mainly because I was exhausted. The map for Beijing looks simple and small but the scale is much bigger than expected when walking around.