Day 2: In China Summer Palace and Great Wall of China

Andy (Fei Yao) was already there on time this morning at 8:30 a.m. Today there is tomorrow’s program, because today is a holiday.

We drive out of the city past a colorful mix of tall concrete buildings and low old houses. It is spring. The magnolias are in their full glory. Trees with small flowers awaken from hibernation in pink, pink or white. The beautiful bright yellow forsythias can also be seen again and again. The vegetation is similar to that in Switzerland. 

We visit the new Summer Palace, an imperial palace from the Qing Dynasty that has been rebuilt several times. The whole park has 2.97 km2, of which about 70% is  the Kunming Lake.

 The bridge railing is decorated with 544 different small dragons of luck. 

At the residence of Cixi, the Empress Dowager, most of the visitors were. Cixi loved the scent of the fruit trees, now with the young flowers, absolutely understandable. 

The men dressed in black come from the south 

There is a lot to see. A real local recreation area. 

After about 2 hours in the park there is a small refreshment, a noodle soup as a snack. 

And now it’s on to the Great Wall of China. 

After 1.5 hours we arrived. As always, there are market stalls with various unnecessary things to buy. Also Pizza Hut, Subway and Burger King… well

Yes, there are many people, but we didn’t have to queue anywhere. The timing in the afternoon was perfect. Andy told us that about 30,000 people come to see the Wall every day. 

We take the cable car, it is also a bit of a walk to get there. Once at the top you can see the mountains and in between it meanders the Great Wall of China. And WE are standing up there in the middle of it. It is a sublime feeling. The uneven stones are challenging. But we spend some time on the wall and enjoy the view. It is almost a bit unreal. 

Markus was able to unpack his camera again. And with the gimble let his cell phone float above everyone’s heads. A little stumbler “only” scraped his hand. Thank God the technology remained intact. The videos don’t work, the Internet connection is sometimes hopelessly overloaded. The videos are inserted when we have a fast connection again.

Now we are driven directly to the restaurant. Today we have Peking duck. Our guide and our driver eat with us, luckily ????

The food was just great. So really good. There were four of us.

Kung Bao Chicken, Peking Duck, Roo duan, Moo Shu Beef, Fried Rice and such…

It was a great day, spring sun, no rain, a manageable number of people and a good atmosphere. We are thrilled and tired.