Breaking the Beijing trip into chunks to make it a little more digestible:
OCT 28th, Saturday
The crew booked a small tour van through Panda Tours, to take us to the Summer Palace and the Great wall at Si1Ma3Tai2 司馬臺
The Summer Palace 頤和園, is located to the northwest of Beijing, and is the palace of the Ming and Qing emperors for summer administration, when Beijing become unbearably hot, they would retreat to their enclave.
The Place was georgeous, and we lucked out on the weather (it cleared up that day, it had been quite hazy/cloudy for the last few days were were in Beijing). It was absolutely crawling with tourists, but it was amazing to marvel and think about how this place must have been ~500-600 years ago. It one of the UNESCO world heritage sites... and it makes sense.
For more about it.. Wiki
The Great Wall:
It was a 3 hour drive to Simatai, winding through some of the windy roads on up to the area. It took quite a while, but it was worth it:
We got there and started climbing up this incline:
It was about comparable to a hike in the Gorge (columbia river gorge)
A few more shots of the distant wall...
and shots in the opposite direction:
If you're very discerning, you can see a zipline platform in this below picture, we took it to get across the valley quickly, it was kind of a rush. and only 35 RMB (4.50 USD!)
For more, see Flickr.
OCT 28th, Saturday
The crew booked a small tour van through Panda Tours, to take us to the Summer Palace and the Great wall at Si1Ma3Tai2 司馬臺
The Summer Palace 頤和園, is located to the northwest of Beijing, and is the palace of the Ming and Qing emperors for summer administration, when Beijing become unbearably hot, they would retreat to their enclave.
The Place was georgeous, and we lucked out on the weather (it cleared up that day, it had been quite hazy/cloudy for the last few days were were in Beijing). It was absolutely crawling with tourists, but it was amazing to marvel and think about how this place must have been ~500-600 years ago. It one of the UNESCO world heritage sites... and it makes sense.
For more about it.. Wiki
The Great Wall:
It was a 3 hour drive to Simatai, winding through some of the windy roads on up to the area. It took quite a while, but it was worth it:
We got there and started climbing up this incline:
It was about comparable to a hike in the Gorge (columbia river gorge)
A few more shots of the distant wall...
and shots in the opposite direction:
If you're very discerning, you can see a zipline platform in this below picture, we took it to get across the valley quickly, it was kind of a rush. and only 35 RMB (4.50 USD!)
For more, see Flickr.
No comments:
Post a Comment