5 Nights in Beijing - Day 4 (Tiananmen Square, Summer Palace, Olympic Stadium)

I'm feeling a lot better today! Still a little stress on the stomach, but not enough to keep me down. Since we staid in the hotel yesterday it was time for some catching up on our Beijing experience. So we made a small plan on where to go and what to see using our remaining time efficient as possible. After breakfast we headed out and started walking south towards Tiananmen Square. The weather was again beautiful with temperatures around 30 degrees (86F), not a cloud in the sky. Arrival at Tiananmen Square first thing we saw was the face of Mao, time to take a quick picture and move on.

The square on its own was not very interesting apart from its gigantic size, however the sculptures surrounding the square representing the founding of the People Republic of China showed a lot history. We headed south and walked through a shopping street after a quick check at a New Balance shoe store which was heavily overpriced it was time to move on. We got a taxi and tried to explain that we wanted to go to the summer palace. He understood what we meant and after a 30 minute drive we arrived at the summer palace which was located in the north-east corner of Beijing. The summer palace as the name might indicate was a palace used by the emperor and the empress during the summer to cool off during the summer. I must say, the emperor had quite a nice location to have his summer palace here. We climbed up to the highest point and took a few pictures and videos of the scenery, truly stunning!


After the Summer Palace we grabbed another taxi, this time heading towards the Olympic Stadium on arrival the line for tickets to have a peek inside the stadium got closed. Bummer just a few minutes late, so we walked around a bit and noticed we could have a look at the Olympic swimming pool. So we did, unfortunate the Olympic swimming pool was closed due to some water show. In the same building there was also a recreational section with some slides that take you in a loop truly amazing, would love to try it sometime. Who knows, we might try this on our way back in 5 months.

After this great sightseeing tour we thought it would be nice to have a drink and eat at one of the bar areas around Beijing. According to our hotel we should head a little bit north of the forbidding city. So we did and we arrived at a lake in the middle of the city where lights were shining all around the lake. We walked around a bit until we passed some restaurants. Here we had dinner, we certainly paid much more than at the previous restaurant, but the food was quite nice. Walking around the lake we were offered drinks and girls that we would have to pay to come drink with us. We took most of the free drinks and left the bar area in a "happy" state. Don't ask me how but for some reason we took the risk to sit with 3 people on a 2 person rickshaw (tuk-tuk) this certainly created a fun situation and we laughed all the way until the hotel. The next morning we would need to get up early to join a tour which we signed up for.