Summer Place & Nanluogu Xiang Street

Sunday, July 29th
Beijing, China

This morning our plan was to go see the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was a summer home to several emperors and empresses, hence the name. The palace is outside of downtown Beijing and our trip there was uneventful until we were a few feet from the entrance. We were walking along the street filled with food vendors when some sort commotion started. I still don’t know if it was an argument between two vendors or if the police were coming to move the vendors off the street, but all I know is that all of a sudden vendors were trying to drive away on their carts. Two crashed in front of me and then one ran into my side, which caused me to lose my balance a little and I caught myself on something behind me. Valerie and I quickly walked away and then I looked down at my hand and purse and saw blood all over it. Nothing hurt so I didn’t know what happened, but then realized the blood was coming from my fingers. I guess I had cut myself when I was trying to catch my balance. Thankfully, there was a first aid area right by the entrance, so I was cleaned and bandaged up right away. I looked like Edward Scissorhands! I ended up with gashes on three of my fingers and thankfully they were not too bad. It was definitely a really weird experience, especially because we had no idea what caused all the chaos in the street.

Me as Edward Scissorhands

A few cuts didn’t ruin our day though. The weather was beautiful and it was a perfect day to see the Summer Palace. The place is humongous. We were there for 5 hours but felt like I only saw half of it! There is a huge lake, Kunming Lake there where you can use a pedal boat or ride one of the dragon boats from one side to the other, which we did of course.

View of Longevity Hill from other side of the Lake

I really enjoyed the Palace. I have to say, I enjoyed it more than the Forbidden City. We also walked up Longevity Hill, which requires you take 100 steps to the top, and the saying goes that those who walk the 100 steps will live to be one hundred, so it was worth it to me! At the top, you have amazing views of the lake and the rest of the grounds of the Palace.

View from Longevity Hill

The Summer Palace is similar to other palaces in that it has gardens and lakes, but this one seems to cover a much larger area and has more buildings spread all throughout the area.

We also continued to notice couples and families in matching shirts or in the case of one mother and daughter pair, the same dress. We even saw a store on Nanluogu Xiang Street that was selling matching his and hers shirts. I guess it is the cool thing to do in China. We also saw plenty of high heeled ladies walking around the Palace looking like they were ready to go to a club not sightsee! My feet kill after walking in Toms or running shoes all day, I don’t know how they can do it in heels.

After our day at the Summer Palace, we headed over to Nanluogu Xiang Street which we had read in our guide books as a good example a remodeled old time Beijing neighborhood, with good restaurants and shops and traditional hutongs (alleyways) as offshoots from the main street. It was nice way to end our day and our last night in Beijing. It’s off to Seoul tomorrow evening!