Labour Day week in Beijing: Old Summer Palace 圆明园
星期日, 四月 30, 2006
Relaxing at the Old Summer Palace
I have such a love-hate relationship with China when it comes to travelling in this country. We have this week off from class in celebration of Labour Day (aka May Day), which would be a great time to travel... if the rest of China didn't this week as well. This meant train tickets were impossible to obtain, thus completely destroying our travel plans.
(On the bright side, we found a great flight deal to Hong Kong so we'll be heading there for a weekend at the end of May. As for our original travel plans this week, we've broken them up into weekend trips throughout the month.)
Anyway, since we are stuck in Beijing for a week, we decided to make the most of our time to catch up on sights we've yet to see. First on the list: 圆明园 Yuan Ming Yuan, the Old Summer Palace, famous for being home to the ruins of "China's Versailles" which was destroyed by Anglo-French forces in 1860.
We wandered around the grounds for a few hours, paying the extra ticket to scramble among the stone remains and - my favourite part - a courtyard containing a maze which leads to a tower in the center.
More photos can be seen here.
Later in the evening, we went back home to play with our favourite new toy:
Yes we bought a toaster oven! Kitchens in Beijing aren't equipped with ovens since baking isn't a common technique in Chinese cooking but we had a real craving for things like homemade cookies. It works really well, but since the tray only fits about six cookies, it took forever to work through a batch of dough meant for 36 cookies. Still, first bite of double chocolate peanut butter chip made all the effort worthwhile.
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