Wonder.Food.Travel

I was not familiar with the Summer Palace (Yihe Yuan) as compared to the Great Wall of China and the Forbidden City. Having visited the place, it propelled this iconic getaway as one of my favourite spots in Beijing. The Longevity Hill and the Kunming Lake, the soil from the man-made lake used to create the hill, are the two most dominant features of this palace. Three quarters of which is water. It is also one of the UNESCO World Heritage sites and was declared as 'a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design'. One of the purposes of this palace was to serve as a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi. The palace complex suffered from attacks and had undergone renovation and rebuilt until the structures we see today. I dedicated one part of this journey to this site because we spent nearly six hours exploring the palace complex and all its major attractions, hiking up and down three times (we didn't have a proper map and the directory inside the Palace was misleading, ...

We checked out from our Jundu Villa Hotel and took a taxi to the Forbidden City, which cost us 160 RMB- a good deal as usual fee is around 200 RMB. Then, we checked into our hostel for the following four nights at King's Joy International Hostel (or Hotel, the same building) on Meishi Street near Qianmen subway station. It was 50 RMB per bed, per night for a six-bedroom dorm with air-conditioning and hot shower. This post will be divided into several parts, flowing as a suggested itinerary. It is amazing to note that the Qianmen Gate, Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City and Jingshan Park lie on a central axis, 0 degree North, and further up is the Olympic Park! How greater can this be? The zero north plaque. Tiananmen Square It is a large square today (enlarged several times in the past). In fact, it is one of the largest squares in the world and walking from one end to another could take some time. This square is located in front of the Forbidden City and got its name fro...