Beijing 2024 - Breakfast and Visiting National Museum of China (中国国家博物馆)

For Cordy's tour, I usually just plan to visit one place a day. If the attraction is small, maybe 2 places a day, one in the morning, on in the afternoon. But in China, it seems that even one day per attraction was almost impossible! So here starts our 2nd attraction, the National Museum of China. For a start, it was really a pain to get tickets to this place. We tried like maybe a few days before securing the tickets. This is because the daily tickets are limited to 30k, and since it's a new museum, and the entrance is free, we were competing with the people in China as well! But I felt really happy that we managed to get tickets, even though we couldn't get the earliest entry tickets. 

But first, breakfast! Unlike most of my friends who likes to breakfast at the hotel or cafe, I prefer to dine where the locals dine. That would mean small stalls, market places, back alley, you get the point. I spotted a local shop on the same street as our hotel and wanted to go try it since it was always packed. I was hoping it would be less crowded in the early morning as we head out. Above is the menu. You know is local if everything is in the local language! 

My lovely breakfast! Hot soya milk and youtiao! I love this combo. The soya milk wasn't as hot or sweet as the one I like in Bangkok Thailand, but it was still good. I think we went here for breakfast twice in our stay, and the second time I added sugar into the hot soya milk and it was just wonderful! We also ordered the Beijing XiaoLongBao, but it was really a 'Bao' instead of the thin layered skin type which is apparently Shanghai XiaoLongBao! I will not be making that same mistake again! Luckily for me, my next China destination is Shanghai 2025! 

It was a beautiful day for a walk to the next attraction. I mean, just look at that beautiful blue sky! But unfortunately, it seems the whole of Beijing was on high security, so we had to take a train there and walk. It was extra cost, but luckily the transport cost here is super affordable! 

And yes, we were headed to this grand looking building place. I later found out that one of those building was the People's Great Hall, the very hall we always watched Chinese New Year's countdown on on cable CCTV at my in-law's place. Lol. It still hasn't quite dawn on me that I was in the capital of China, one of the largest and populated country in the world!

On our way to the museum I initially planned to visit TianNanMen Square since it was free. But when we reached the entrance, we were told that we needed a reservation to visit even if it's free. How sad. I did later found out that we could visit if we had a ticket to the museum of palace. But haiya..... Nevermind lah. I did eventually managed to visit the place another day, but missed out on Mao's Mausoleum because I though it was also in TianNanMen Square hence only needed one reservation. Ha! You needed two separate reservation! So again, sadly, that was the only itinerary item on my trip that I didn't managed to visit.

Since this post is about the National Museum of China, let us now focus on that! Above is the front entrance. But to go in, there was a long queue by the side entrance even though everyone that needed to go in had to have a booking.

I think the building is so grand and beautiful. It reminded very much of the white house that I often seen on tv and movies. But that this was in China, and that I was kinda part Chinese makes me kinda proud of the people of China. Actually, through out the whole trip, I was pretty impressed with China and how far it has progressed. 

Since the ticket here was so hard to get, here's a selfie for our success!