The Great Wall of China - April 6th

Our flight plan for Beijing Day 2: the Great Wall in the morning; the Summer Palace of the Manchu Emperors in the afternoon, Happy Hour at the Beijing Raffles, and Peking duck for dinner. Plan the flight and fly the plan.

Take-off for the Great Wall was by chairlift. The Wall is high up on the ridgeline of a line of mountains:

From the chairlift we could see our glide path to go back down the mountain. The Chinese translate it as “toboggan” but we know it as an alpine slide. It's one of Parnelli Joan’s favorite things to do. You don’t want to go slow in front of her; she attains ramming speed very quickly.

The wall was pretty amazing. The pictures speak for themselves. Especially with the wild cherry trees in bloom on the mountainside in early April.

Here we are lining up to make our run down the mountainside. I made the mistake of going in front of Joani. Things were fine until I had to reduce speed near the bottom so I wouldn’t hit the person in front of me. Joani yelled at everyone to go faster and then slammed right into me.

An added excursion bonus, at the tourist center at the bottom we saw four live pandas:

These pandas were named Joyce, Julie, Joani and Sheila.

After another traditional Chinese lunch with Yanjing beer, we arrived at the Summer Palace of the Manchu Emperors. The men were then greeted by the Empress and three Concubines: 

Their names were also Joyce, Julie, Joani and Sheila.

I personally was very attracted to one concubine in particular:

The Summer Palace was built in 1749 by the Qianlong Emperor. The grounds are larger than the Forbidden City at 3 kilometers square. Half is the peacefully tranquil man-made Kunming Lake. The park is on the World Heritage List as “a masterpiece of Chinese landscape design.” Excavations from making the lake were of course used to make a hill upon which a temple was built. We are figuring this stuff out.

This Emperor loved to travel all over China, and he brought artists with him who  came back to the palace and recaptured the places he visited in paintings. Kind of like iPhone cameras. Anyway, the Long Corridor is a 728 meter-long lakeside walkway with over 14,000 paintings. The Qianlong Emperor ruled for 60 years, so he saw a lot of places.

One of the 14,000 paintings

Crabapple trees blooming on the shore of Kunming Lake as seen from the Long Corridor

The Temple on Longevity Hill above Kunming Lake

The Arch Bridge across Kunming Lake

One Emperor had a favorite boat destroyed by a violent storm. So that this would never happen again, he had a stationary boat built out of marble. One way to solve the problem.

So on that note we left the Summer Palace for Happy Hour, followed by a wonderful Peking duck dinner at a restaurant called Da Dong recommended by our guide Cindy. Here is one of the Peking ducks being carved:

Tomorrow: our last day in Beijing and then back to the ship late afternoon.