Originally Posted by
Scifience
This sounds like the sort of itinerary that some guided tour would try to pull off: oh, look, now we're walking past the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall, and here's the Meridian Gate, and on your left you can see the... alright, now back on the bus, everyone!
I'd like to think it's a step above that since I'm pretty sure that I'm the one that originally planted the seed that gave rise to this thread.
But, seriously, I just like the idea of knocking off all of the aforementioned sites during a single continuous stretch,... without spending too much time pondering the past of specific artifacts.
Given the fact that it's self guided, there's zero gift shop pressure and there are many opportunities to speed things up (i.e. jump in a taxi) or call it quits midway through.
I've done the same jaunt many times (though usually no Drum Tower) and have rarely gotten started before 1pm.