Afternoon

As our time in The Forbidden City ran out we met outside of Gate of Divine Prowess at north side of The Forbidden City. Rich was waiting us there and we got our passports back. Our flight to Lhasa was confirmed and in 2 days we are flying!

The most members of our group were ready to go to Hutong, typical place where common Chinese live with narrow streets and old houses, but we wanted to visit Summer Palace. We asked Peter, our local guide, how to get to subway and he recommended us to use taxi instead if we want to be back on time for Beijing Acrobats show in the evening.

Summer Palace

We had not much luck with taxis for maybe 30 minutes. Close to the Forbidden City they could not stop due to barrier (that did not discourage rickshaws though), then as we got further away all cabs were taken so we were waving to them as mad.

Eventually one stopped. I have shown him photocopied page from guide (there is no compelling reason to haul thick guide book with yourself to organized trip when you fight with your luggage for every cubic cm of space and everything is arranged). He agreed and to take us there when Zuzka noticed I am showing him incorrect page! I have quickly turned the page and started again. This time driver reconfirmed our desire to go the Summer Palace being aware he is going to ride some western fools (with that I mean myself, not Zuzka, of course!).

It cost us 52 RMB, compared to 4 RMB for subway (subway is unbelievably cheap in China), but that is about 5 GBP. It is very good price for about 25km. Well, I miss opportunity to ride on Chinese subway a bit...

We wanted to buy ticket to garden and to palace (30 and 60), but cashier refused to sell us latter one. With poor skills to pronounce 2 Chinese words (hello and thank you, if you are interested) we did not have much luck to understand the reason. My guess, however, is that she sells only one kind of ticket and you need to buy other when you get there. With vastness of China it seems to be smart thing, because you might not be able to get there on time as we found yesterday and we will reconfirm soon.

It is easy to get lost in the Summer Palace without knowing at what end you are and only small map in copied from the book. We were lucky as we settled to go in correct direction and we found the lake soon. We could not see Marble Boat yet, but we knew it is at its shore, so we should find it easily.

The weather did not change much. While we could see hints of grey blue in the sky while being in the Forbidden City (I hope my photos on previous page look like they have blue sky) it was pure thick grey now. It was shortly after noon so the temperature was even higher, fortunately emperors knew that Summer Palace is meant to be used in summer and therefore there are many trees providing relieving shade. It was comfortable to be here (even for me!).

Initially we decided to go to the left, because we could see a nice bridge with alluring island. Not to mention we wanted to take less foggy picture. But shortly we decided to skip it, because it was too far and we were getting further away from Marble Boat on the other side (and still wanting to go to the palace on the hill top.

After changing our direction we went slightly uphill to park. Shade and freshness of trees was wonderful. We could get nice lunch and see interesting things in Hutong if we went there, but real nature with cool air and nice smells is all we wanted then.

When we got to stairs to temple, we decided we are going to Marble Boat first and we will return later if there is still time. We came here to see the boat, because it is said it was built with money meant to be spent on imperial navy. Empress Cixy, however, got better idea :-)

It was not impressive much. I believe the reason was the sky. All scenes look worse without blue sky and grey marble is not different. We took a few photos from all possible sides and continued with exploration of garden. We did not return to temple stairs, but went to north.

We have found a few more nice places in the garden. Later we have realized there is not much time left to go to temple so we decided return to our hotel. Traffic jams will probably happen and we need to be refreshed before going to acrobats' show at 7:30.

As Rich suggested in the morning we walked up for 10 minutes away from the gate of Summer Palace to avoid cheating taxi drivers and took one waiting along the road. We showed him a card from hotel containing a map and he took us to "nearby" park, because it was only place he recognized.

It turned, it was not really close (surprise, surprise, you are in China!), but we found our way to hotel and were on time. That's what counts.

Beijing Acrobats

I did not expect anything spectacular from this show. I knew Chinese are good at these things, but that was gross understatement.

They were fabulous! It was fast, colourful and amazing experience. We were in the 2nd row so I got a good chance to take pictures. However it was not easy as it was quite dark and my camera does not perform well at ISO 800. So I got many bad shaky photos, but some of them took advantage of long speeds.