We were dead-set on getting up early and getting out to the Great Wall on Saturday morning. Yeah, that didn't happen. So we switched days and headed for the Summer Palace. We took the subway from the hotel and headed for the correct stop. When we got off the subway, signs pointed us to the exit that would lead to the Summer Palace. But once we exited the station, there was no indication which direction to go or how far to walk. Fortunately, there were enough tourist-looking people coming from one particular direction, so we made a gamble and before too long found ourselves at the West gate.
The Summer Palace is set on almost 3 square km, though admittedly most of that is occupied by Kunming Lake. But don't let that fool you. It takes A LOT of walking to cover this place. And we didn't even have time to see everything.
But the coolest part was the Tower of Buddhist Incense. It was really like a mini-complex within the greater complex. Courtyards within courtyards, with a tall tower in the center. It was pretty impressive and offered some amazing views of the lake and other surrounding areas.
It was a pretty warm day, and there were many ladies selling water just outside of the outer gates. But one little lady was smarter than the rest. She had frozen her bottles, so even though she had been sitting outside in the hot sun with them for hours, the core was still frozen. Ahhh! It was great! And only 2 CNY (about 30 cents).
From the Summer Palace we made our way to the Beijing Zoo. There were signs directing us to the proper exit, but again, once we exited the building, there was no indication which direction to go. We looked right and left and couldn't see anything that looked like a zoo in either direction. We picked right. Wrong. We walked 10, maybe 15 minutes in that direction before we gave up and turned around. We finally made it back past the subway stop and made it a little further down the street. Where we found the ticket booths... right in front of a different subway station. Thank you, city of Beijing, for your oh-so-informative signs. Having them in English isn't really that useful if they lead you the wrong way.
The zoo was huge and had pretty grounds, I thought, but unfortunately there weren't that many animals, especially considering the size of the zoo. You had to walk quite a distance between each section of animals, and their individual habitats were not very impressive, often overgrown and unkempt. I'll just say it wasn't Blake's favorite zoo in the world. And while the admission was cheap, you had to pay again to see certain animals once you were already inside the zoo, which I haven't seen before. But it wasn't that expensive, so it wasn't so bad. Although we did pass on the aquarium section in the back that cost over 3 times the zoo entrance fee. Hope it wasn't good! But of course they had pandas, which we always enjoy. And I really just like getting to see zoos in other countries.
The most frustrating part was actually leaving the zoo. It took so long to walk around the zoo that we finally made it out shortly before closing time. And unfortunately, so did many other people. There was a subway stop right in front of the zoo, but the line was outrageous! So, with cabs being as cheap as they are in Beijing, we decided we'd just hail a taxi. A few other people had the same idea, and several of us stood at the edge of the road for quite a while waiting for a cab. A few passed, but they all had charges already. We finally gave up catching one on our own and called the hotel to ask them to contact a cab company for us. The hotel informed us that you can't call cabs in Beijing, you can only hail them on the street. Is this usual? Do you know of other cities like this? I mean, I guess Baton Rouge isn't really a fair comparison, but I know you can call a cab company and have them send a cab to you. And we have been to quite a few cities around the world over the last year or so, and we've always been able to call a cab company. Oh well... Anyway, so we completely gave up the taxi idea at that point. The hotel did graciously offer to send the hotel van for about $40, but we opted for the 60 cent option of braving the subway. And eventually we did make it back to our hotel safe and sound. And we slept well that night!
No comments:
Post a Comment