The Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace and Olympic Park

Ancient and Modern Wonders

The Headline destinations in any visit to Beijing are the Forbidden City and the nearby Great Wall. Only slightly less ambitious in their scale are the Temple of Heaven, The Summer Palace and their modern cousin the Bird's Nest and Water Cube within the Olympic Park.

Temple of Heaven

The Temple of Heaven is a massive park with grand halls for Prayer, Penance, Animal Sacrifice. The Basic ticket costs about Yuan 15 and that requires additional charge for 3 or 4 pavilions within the park. Or spend Yuan 35 or so and get entry to all, most require you to show your passport again.

It is a spectacular park and buildings within are gorgeous. It is a long walk and if you are in the middle of summer ensure everybody is fit. It can get quite crowded.

The Summer Palace

This is in the North-Eastern flank of Beijing and from its hillside views provides a good view of the entire City. It is at the edge of a spectacular Lake wit a tear drop island in its middle.

It needs you to climb up a hill from one side , before which you can pass through a village of Shops eager to sell you stuff that surrounds a waterway, this is Suzhou village. Feel free to bargain here, things are quoted at a minimum twice of what it should be. I got some Calligraphy done here, which was nice, not extraordinary, but that's what I was hoping for. 

The Summer Palace

The Long (Very Log) Corridor

You Climb the hill and the buildings become grander and the near the lake shore is a mile long covered walkway, where you an walk the way the Kings did. There are numerous buildings for Queens and Kings all along the way and the shore line is peppered with other find venues.

Unfortunately the need to sell to tourists has overtaken any cause to preserve these historic buildings and practically every building in the Shore facing half of the Palace is a Store selling you assorted mementos,  Jewelry, Silk, Soft drinks and just about everything else. This is depressing. I did not take a boat ride around the Lake, but it seems like a nice ride if you have the time.

National Stadium aka Olympic Park

The Opening ceremony of the 2008 games is still vivid in my eyes and Birds Nest and Water Cube are no less impressive close up. Plan a visit that will take you into twilight and darkness to see these venues lit up. To actually go into the Venues themselves, you need to be there before 18:00 hours, (check current timings always). But the Park is big as you'd expect and very impressive.

Olympic Flame Holder

The Birds Nest

The Water Cube

This park is also littered with lots of Souvenir shops and also shops selling assorted items. The Birds Nest is architecturally stunning to me and there is store near the entry (next to the flame holder, pictured above) that had some hand bags, back packs designed with a portion of the Nest in its image which I found  very nice.

There are a lot more facilities and a tower or two that you can visit here, but I didn't have the time. It took us 3 interchanges to get here, so allow Google Maps to guide your Subway routes, there is a small mall + food court of sorts as soon as you step out of the Subway at the National Stadium stop.

This area is is about 45 minutes north of Central Beijing. Taking a car here may not help as you have to walk inside the Park anyway, We went on a week day and there were a couple of Street parties with people dancing, music being played and young ones hanging around in some areas.