Emerging China - IV. SUMMER PALACE

Day 5 Summer Palace

We left our luggage in the hotel ready to depart on that evening to Shanghai, then we took the metro to Summer Palace which is a little bit isolated but worth to go!

Maybe it was due to the hot weather or the early hour in the morning but this was the attraction in which we found more queues to enter. This huge park was the garden in which the emperors went to scape from the boiling city.

Once inside, we took an alternative path to get away of the crowd and, while going up to the hill through the forest, we came into a group of elder Chinese practising tai chi. Once again, sitting there staring at them was amazingly relaxing.

Some say that the views of Beijing from the top of the hill are priceless, but it's also true that in that city there are many days of poor visibility, and that was one of those days. In any case, we could enjoy the magic gardens with rivers, nenufars, pavilions, bridges and the lake. There was a corridor similar to the one we saw in Temple of Heaven from which you could see the whole lake of Kunming, the boats where so authentic, and the whole scenario too.

Back in Beijing, we picked up the luggage in our hotel and before taking the Airport Express train (that casually stops in Dongzhimen too) we had lunch in a Vegetarian Restaurant called Nei Fu Dishes Wuyutai, clean, cost efficient and kind of luxurious. One of the particularities of China is that you can find a Hutong at a 10 meters distance of a business center skyscraper. Related to this, we found this restaurant at 5min walking distance to our hotel, and we could even order the plates in an iPad. The problem was not knowing the dimensions of the dishes... and it was useless trying to ask in English, so at the end we got a table full of a delicious meal that ended up to be also our dinner (you can ask to bring with you the remaining food, they'll put it in a take away plastic box, easy and practical!).

Finally, we travelled from Beijing to Shanghai. (Take into account that the majority of internal flights in China are delayed, ours departed 45min after the scheduled hour; the other option is the high speed train, that it's said to be reliable and so modern.)