Beijing Day 2

On our second day, my conference started in the afternoon. We took advantage of the free morning and went out to the Summer Palace. This is the new version of the Summer Palace; we didn't have time to visit the ruins of the old version. But this was beautiful and impressive. Tuesday was the second clearest day we had in China, so that made the trip even more pleasant. The Summer Palace was created by the Empress Cixi as her main home. The Palace buildings revolve around a lake northwest of the city. A very long corridor abuts the lake, and a serious complex of buildings climb the hills away from the lake. We explored the buildings up the hill, crested the hill, and ended on the other side in a public park around the palace. In a manner reminiscent of the Riverwalk in San Antonio, the Chinese have built a replica of an antique Chinese street along a river behind the palace. It was a bit touristy but pretty cute. After wandering that, we clamored back over the hill, and caught a boat across the lake. The boat left from a dock next to Empress Cixi's Marble Boat. We finished with a walk along the lake and a taxi back to the hotel. We had a bit of trouble catching a taxi; it cost us 25 RMB to taxi from the hotel to the palace, and taxi drivers wanted us to pay a fixed price of 100 RMB back. We finally found a driver willing to use his meter; the ride ended up costing only 20 RMB. Here are the map and photos of our Tuesday morning trip.

Beijing Day 2

While I was at the conference on Tuesday afternoon, Tim took a walk in the Beijing suburb around our hotel. Here's the map of his walk (nothing really picture-worthy, which is surprising for Tim, who took 1500 photos while we were away...):
Beijing Day 2: Afternoon at EveryTrailMap created by EveryTrail:GPS Geotagging