Summer Palace and Acrobatic Show

I went to bed at midnight on Tuesday night, and I slept relatively well throughout the night. I got up at 6:30 feeling refreshed. After another buffet breakfast at the hotel we were on our way to the Summer Palace. The Summer Palace is a man made palace/gardens for the mother of one of the emperors for her 60th birthday present. He had a lake, hills, temples, and living spaces built for her in 3 years in the 1700’s. It was a very pretty place, and we particularly enjoyed the cool breezes coming off the lake. After spending our morning there we had lunch at a restaurant in the city. Lunch was served served in the same manner as yesterday and we enjoyed everything they brought out.

We were brought back to the hotel where we had about an hour and a half to relax before we met up again to go to the Chao Yang Theatre for an acrobatic show. The rush hour traffic in Beijing is terrible and we walked in a couple of minutes late to the show, but we were seated in the second row. The show lasted an hour and was super entertaining. From the amazing contortions to the motor bikes in the cage to the gymnasts on bicycles, all were enjoyable to watch. After the show it was back to the rush hour traffic to get to our restaurant for our Peking Duck dinner

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Dinner was served in much the same style as our our lunches and had different offerings, but for me the best was the duck. It wasn’t as good as Grandma Grams or my mom’s duck dinners, but it was delicious. The juiciness of the skin was yummy!

The dinner table and bus ride back were pretty quiet as I think we’re all exhausted and still recovering from jet lag. We hit the sack earlier tonight as tomorrow is a 5:30 wake up call for our trip to the Great Wall for the race course inspection.