Hey Guys,

here comes the second point on my list the summer palace. The summer palace is an amazing palace. The most important thing to know for this trip and i would advice to make it a whole day adventure, you need something like sport shoes. You have to talk any stairs and something like climbing… a little bit. Has you can assume now is that the summer palast is built on a hill what makes it so much more beautiful than the other temple.

Few first infos

If you want to have an audio guide you can take one on the start. You have of course chinese as a language and english. This is a big sightseeing so you have a lot of other languages for example german.
Of course you have to pay for the inlet. No matter if you visit the summer palast or the forbidden city it is all the same way. You can only pay for the main attraction here it would the summer palast or for the whole area.
Than you have to different price one for the peak season – that would be summer – and the low season – Winter. So for summer it would be 50 yuan and 40 yuan in winter. (For germans 1 yuan divide through 7 and you got Euros – in this case it would be 7,14 € and winter 5,71 €). So yes buy a ticket for everything.

The area

The area is really big. With the through ticket there are for 6 buildings you have entred to. Summer Palace, Garden of Virtue and Harmony, Wenchang Gallery, Suzhou Street and Tower of Buddhist Incense. But there is way more to see like the mamor boat and the kunming sea.

Kuniming Sea

The sea is taking the most of the area. It is a beautiful sea and you can get with about over it. The boat is driving you around a area with the look at a few pavilions. Sadly i hadn’t that look because we started at the wrong side and lost to much time at searching for the Tower of Buddhist. But my friend told us that it is absolutely worth it.
The buildings close at 17:00 o’clock. But the area is longer open. So we sit there in the park with the look at the sea. It is quite nice.

Garden of Virtue and Harmony

We think when we read garden about green grass and flowers, but this is not what you will find here. Actually you will only find a tree in the middle of it and a theater, what is actually the one thing that is to see their. The theater is really beautiful.

But you can find in the area a garden that is a little bit more like a garden. It is a really beautiful place is a little away from the main road so there are not so much people. So this is a good place to make pause.

Wenchang Gallery

‘The exhibits include bronzeware, jewelry, chinaware, furniture, paintings, calligraphy, ancient books, enamels, clocks, handicrafts made of gold, silver, bamboo, wood, ivory, horn and lacquer, and other miscellaneous items, representing almost all types of Chinese antiques.’
This is what you can read everywhere and you find there really beautifull things. But if you expect something like the juwelry in London for example you will not find them there. There is alot with jade in many forms. You should totally take a look in there.

Suzhou Street

My friend likes this part the most. This is a street around the moat with alot of little businesses. It is a sweet street. The way is really small but it has a nice atmosphere.

Tower of Buddhist

You can see the Tower from any points of the area but we had a few problems finding the right way into the building. It is on mountain/hill and you have to ‘climb’ many stairs to get to it but it is totally worth the sight.

So this is an amazing place and totally worth visiting. Hope this was hopefull. If you have questions you can always write me.