Well I’ve finally decided to add another post about our Tibet trip which is now over. Of course I am backdating this post to accurately reflect dates from our trip 
So on our second day in Lhasa we went and visited the Potala Palace. The Potala Palace historically was the seat of government in Tibet where the Dalai Lama ruled from. The Fifth Dalai Lama started its construction in 1645 and it remained the residence for the Dalai Lama until 1959 when the Fourteenth Dalai Lama fled to India (he is still the current Dalai Lama and is still in exile). As a side note, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama (born as Lhamo Dondrub but his religious name is Tenzin Gyatso) was born in 1935, selected as the Dalai Lama in 1937 (he is supposed to be the rebirth of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, it took them a few years to decide which child this was), and was officially recognized as the Dalai Lama in 1950 when he was just 15 years old.
Now back to the Potala Palace; the building measures 400 meters (about 1280 feet) by 350 meters (about 1120 feet) and has sloping walls that are 3 meters (about 10 feet) thick. There are thirteen stories of buildings containing over 1,000 rooms, 10,000 shrines, and 200,000 statues.
There is a time limit for tours of the Potala Palace. From the time we enter we have one hour to finish our tour, so you can imagine we only saw a fraction of the palace. You are not allowed to take pictures inside the palace so I don’t have any from there, I do however have some more pictures we took from the top of the palace as we were leaving.
Inside the palace the smell of incense was very strong. There were statues of Buddha all over (more like the Indian Buddhas instead of the conventional fat Buddha you would normally think of). Also, if you didn’t know, there are actually multiple Buddhas that Buddhists worship. There are hundreds of them, maybe more. There is a Buddha of education, money, future, past, present, longevity, and just about anything you can think of. One common feature throughout all the monasteries and temples we visited in Tibet was that they generally at least had the future, past, and present Buddhas and also often had the Longevity Buddha.
We saw the tombs of many of the former Dalai Lamas inside the palace, these were the 5th through the 13th (with the exception of the 6th who was buried in Mongolia). These tombs all featured ornate designs, architectures, and decor. They had murals painted on the walls, Buddhas throughout, and many had precious stones embedded in the floors.
As we left the palace we got a great view of Lhasa, and took the opportunity to take some more pictures.
