Day 4 began with a nice sunny and warm morning. I was relieved it was sunny considering the previous day was pretty dampening and my daughter and I got caught in the heavy rain while walking along the Italian Style Street in Tianjin. My shoes had been soaked then and the bottom half of my jeans. Fortunately I had a spare pair of shoes so I wore those for today...
We headed out from our hotel and to the Begongmen subway (line 4) where the Summer Palace is just a short walk away... The ticket to the Summer Palace costed RMB60 per person and we paid it....
This supposedly includes little side visits to a couple of other places like the Suzhou Street and also Hall of Dispelling Clouds and such....
We were there as early as 8am and when we entered the premises, we were not allowed to go to Suzhou Street yet as it was not yet opened.. bah humbuggg... However, we took some pictures... Here is one... if you want to see more, continue reading my blog as I will be posting individual interesting sites in Beijing and more details on it . This post is more or less just a summarizing of how I spent my days there...
Anyway, we were kind of in a hurry as we intended to squeeze in as many interesting places as we can in our short 6 days stay... I am telling you all you really need at least 10 days or more if you want to take your own sweet time and check out every interesting places....
Ok... here is yours truly trying to or rather pretending to try to meditate in front of the "Four Great Regions"... from there, we 'hiked' up the hill or the stairs to the "Realm of the Multitudinous Fragrance" and down some shady forest trail until we reached the "Long Corridor"
We wandered around a little bit and I would say only manage to check out about 1/8 of the whole Summer Palace...in about 4 hours... before exiting the "North Ruyi Gate" and heading back to the subway to move on to the Old Summer Palace or Yuanming Yuan....
Yuanming Yuan was on my list as I really wanted to see the ruins, but what I did not quite bargain for was the trek inside... hahaha....it costed us about RMB25 to enter the gardens and the ruins... I would say it is well worth the price.
The garden was gorgeous with lots of greenery and colourful flowers.
The lakes here in Beijing, or should I say China are simply mesmerizing and beautiful, made even more by the surrounding trees and lots of weeping willows that made the ambience just romantic...
From the entrance of the Yuanming Yuan gardens into the ruins area took about slightly more then a kilometre to walk there... (My guess) and after walking in the Summer Palace and making the distance here, my legs were all but ready to give out.
The place was beautiful but however it was definitely more European like then Chinese... It is definitely a must to visit this place if you are a fan of ancient cultures and history, but if you are not, maybe you might find it boring, as I heard some people say.. but for me it was a place I had to visit, and I am happy I did...however, the thought of another KM walk out the park made me worried, so my daughter and I decided to relax and regain our energy and took the tram out instead. There is a tram there and it cost RMB8 per person. The tram however only takes you 3/4 way out the park...so we are left with walking out the other 1/4 which was better then nothing, I guess....
Barely catching our breath, we headed to the Temple of Heaven at the Tiantandongmen stop along Subway Line 5. Entry to the Temple of Heaven is RMB35
Somehow we ended up turning right from the exit of the subway and walking a very long distance... we found out if you had just turned left, the distance would have been even shorter... hahahah....
The Temple of Heaven was definitely a breathtaking sight... it was just beautiful and this is also a place many brides to be come to take their wedding pictures... just as the Italian Style Street in Tianjin...
In just a space of 15 minutes, we can spot about 6-7 brides and grooms having their photoshoots...
And... ahh... you can rent the costume as well as have a photo shoot as well from the kiosk if you like... it is pretty reasonable at RMB30....
After the Temple of Heaven, my daughter and I wanted to head to Prince Gong mansion but we were hard pressed for time so we changed some plans and I decided for a change, we should also check out something modern.... and my choice was to go check out the CCTV Headquarters outside.. to my daughter's obvious displeasure.... This was at the Jintaixizhao stop along Subway line 10.....
For your info, Beijing is convenient to travel around and do your own sightseeing just using subways like I did... it can be a bit tiring changing trains and if you exit the subway and re-enter the subway, you have to get your bags and belonging including bottled drinks checked.. yeahhh..... the security in Beijing is pretty tight...there are checks at every subway and also places of interest....
Finally we headed back to our hotel...and stopped by the McDonald's there... For the fussy people, please do not do it... as the McDonald's here are not halal... but I consider myself an average Muslim and well, I head inside and I order myself the Filet-O-Fish set... and have my dinner before heading back to the hotel...
And that.... is the end of my Day 4..... huhuhu.... time do fly when you are having fun....
BTW, all these photos were taken by my new Nikon Coolpix S33... the pictures are pretty good I think... don't you agree? My Sony camera somehow seemed to sulk since I got this camera and I had to send it to be service which I did a couple of days ago... huhuhu
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