The Summer Palace

Today we went to the summer palace. It was made by an emperor who
wanted somewhere nice to go when it was hot in the forbidden city. He
made people dig him a massive 2.2 Square kilometre lake. And then
built a park around it. It is truly astonishing and amazing. The
grounds are so pretty and personally I found the most peaceful place
to be the garden of Harmonies Interest which had a beautiful small
lake stocked with thousands of gold fish. Very pretty.

Around the park we saw some ladies dancing which made Michelle giggle
as it reminded her of her Mum dancing around the house.

To get the main photo of the entire lake we had to climb up another
big tall hill with a temple on top. We attempted this after walking
around the entire lake and we where exhausted we kept being passed by
young children running past as whilst we felt out of breathe. We sat
down for a quick rest half way up this impossibly steep hill and where
surprised when a couple approached us with a camera. We at first
thought they wanted us to move to get a photo because we where in way.
We where wrong. She wanted to have a photo taken with us as we are
westerners. We had been warned about this before we came but people
suggested it would happen in more rural areas. It took us by surprise
to have it happen in Beijing. But it was fine by us.

Please note we are having to compress the images to load them up so
their quality is reduced