Our world tour started on April 1st from Geneva. A connection in Frankfurt, and then the night on the plane, that kind of night where you half doze off, your head falling on the other's shoulder. We landed in Beijing on April 2 in the early morning, with a 12-hour layover ahead of us. 12 hours is a long time. We could have stayed at the airport, ordered overpriced noodles and watched planes take off. We preferred to go see the Forbidden City. As soon as we left the airport, we jumped on the metro. No taxi, no VTC app, just local transport like everyone else. It was already exotic, already alive, already exactly what we were looking for when we left. We had booked a guided tour with an appointment at 9:30 a.m. We thought we would arrive around 8:30 a.m., be free, and have time to have a coffee. We had not at all anticipated what awaited us: security checks everywhere, endless lines, around ten checkpoints in total. In Beijing, access to the Forbidden City cannot be improvised. We arrived late. The guide had left without us. At the time, we looked at each other with that mixture of fatigue and amusement that travel always ends up causing. And then we went in anyway. And then the rest disappeared. The Forbidden City is huge.
Truly immense, not in the sense that we get lost, but in the sense that we understand that there was an entire life there, generations of emperors, centuries of a China that we only know through images. We walked for three hours through the palaces, the interior courtyards, the monumental gates. Without a guide, yes, but with eyes wide open. The history of the place is self-explanatory. There are a lot of people. Entrance controls are grueling. But once inside, clearly, it's worth it. It wasn't a real stay in Beijing, just a break of a few hours. But we are really happy to have experienced it rather than having avoided it out of laziness or fatigue. Late afternoon, return to the airport. Direction Manila, the Philippines, our first real stop on this year-long world tour. We were starting to feel the exhaustion setting in. Two almost sleepless nights, a day walking in an imperial city... Our first real bed awaited us, and we have never deserved it more.