Weekend in Chengde
This weekend, I went to the old imperial summer palace at Chengde. The weekend travel group consisted of Adam, Chris (who happened to have went to IU for a year!), Paulina, and myself.
I got up on Saturday morning at an ungodly hour and was on the train by 7:40am. The four hour train ride was interesting, especially when Chris was entertaining the Chinese pasangers besides me with his Chinese.
The weather for all of saturday was rainy and left an ugly shade of brown and gray the whole day, lefving little to be desired for. When we first arrived, our first mission was to find a place to sleep for the night. After visiting a number of hotels, Adam and Chris finally decided to not be penny-pinchers (haha!) and we settled with a hotel that offered us 2 rooms at 100 RMB each (that's about 9 USD).
In the afternoon, we started our Chengde sightseeing by going to two temples. They were both very Tibetan/Mongolian inspired, an interesting fact since Chengde is geographically far away from both places. The picture, by the way, is from the first temple.
We finished our two temple excursion in the late afternoon, so we decided to contribute in helping Chengde's economy by visiting one of it's 3 bars. A number of TsingDao's and platefuls of pistachio's later (which we scarved down like wolves), Adam and Chris were certifiably buzzed. As well, it was almost 9pm and we are missing dinner!
A night's restless sleep at the slightly seedy hotel later, Sunday turned out to be glorious - an velvet blue sky day and the beautiful, bright sun.
Sunday's main objective was to see the imperial summer palace. Everything started pretty normal...until we reached the bus ride part of the park where they demaded another 40 RMB (we have already paid 90 RMB for the entrance ticket. The Forbidden City's entrance fee is only 60 RMB!!). In the end, that was decided to be unacceptable, so our alternative was to walk the 5 mile mountain road.
Two and a half hours later, we were yelled at by a kinda scary man, walked along the mini-great wall, and caught some very nice scenery.
I enjoyed the train ride back more than the one to Chengdu. It's a wonder what the sun and a blue sky can do for the scenery outside. The emrald mountains were lovely and we even passed 2 different sections of the Great Wall.
Soon enough, we reached Beijing, thus ending another weekend in China. Pretty!
I got up on Saturday morning at an ungodly hour and was on the train by 7:40am. The four hour train ride was interesting, especially when Chris was entertaining the Chinese pasangers besides me with his Chinese.
The weather for all of saturday was rainy and left an ugly shade of brown and gray the whole day, lefving little to be desired for. When we first arrived, our first mission was to find a place to sleep for the night. After visiting a number of hotels, Adam and Chris finally decided to not be penny-pinchers (haha!) and we settled with a hotel that offered us 2 rooms at 100 RMB each (that's about 9 USD).
In the afternoon, we started our Chengde sightseeing by going to two temples. They were both very Tibetan/Mongolian inspired, an interesting fact since Chengde is geographically far away from both places. The picture, by the way, is from the first temple.
We finished our two temple excursion in the late afternoon, so we decided to contribute in helping Chengde's economy by visiting one of it's 3 bars. A number of TsingDao's and platefuls of pistachio's later (which we scarved down like wolves), Adam and Chris were certifiably buzzed. As well, it was almost 9pm and we are missing dinner!
A night's restless sleep at the slightly seedy hotel later, Sunday turned out to be glorious - an velvet blue sky day and the beautiful, bright sun.
Sunday's main objective was to see the imperial summer palace. Everything started pretty normal...until we reached the bus ride part of the park where they demaded another 40 RMB (we have already paid 90 RMB for the entrance ticket. The Forbidden City's entrance fee is only 60 RMB!!). In the end, that was decided to be unacceptable, so our alternative was to walk the 5 mile mountain road.
Two and a half hours later, we were yelled at by a kinda scary man, walked along the mini-great wall, and caught some very nice scenery.
I enjoyed the train ride back more than the one to Chengdu. It's a wonder what the sun and a blue sky can do for the scenery outside. The emrald mountains were lovely and we even passed 2 different sections of the Great Wall.
Soon enough, we reached Beijing, thus ending another weekend in China. Pretty!
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