Beijing

The Beihai Park is the first imperial site I visited in Beijing. It was an imperial garden and now it is not a public park and you must buy ticket to enter the park. Inside the park you can find Temple, small gardens, the 9 Dragon Screen, some chinese pavilions and across the lake, the White Pagoda.

Not far from there is the most popular site in Beijing, the Forbidden City (The chinese call it Gùg?ng, the former palace). It is big, although we skipped a lot of the buildings, it still took us more than 5 hours. The main entrance is connected with the Tiananmen square, but on that day they blocked it because of the 1 year Olympiade count down.

The last imperial site is the Summer Palace (Yíhé Yuán). You probably have to spend 1 day to visit the whole area. We just able to saw the Chinese Opera Theather, then walked to the top of Longevity Hill, walked down through the Long Corridor, watched the Marble Boat, cross the river and took the exit near the 17 Arch bridge.