Well I believe who reads my blog is waiting for my recent trip to Beijing.
When I plan a trip I try to not look too much at the budget but of course I do have one. In order to stay in my budget I prefer to stay maybe 2-3 days instead of 4-5 days so I limit my costing but not my adventure 😊
I’ve promised you a lot of pictures. Actually I have around 500 🤪 😳 but you’ll be probably too bored to see them all so I did a selection of my favourite pictures.
Are you ready? Come with me and discover Beijing through my pictures.
Our first day started with Tiananmen Square, which is within the top 10 biggest squares in the world. The square contains the Monument to the People’s Heroes, the Great Hall of the People, the National Museum of China, and the Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, who proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in the square on 1st October 1949.
In front of Tiananmen Square there is the Forbidden City, the Chinese imperial palace or the home of Ming and Qing dynasty emperors for almost 500 years. It was constructed from 1406 to 1420 and the complex consists of 980 buildings and covers 72 hectares (over 180 acres). In 1987 the Forbidden City was declared a World Heritage Site and is listed by UNESCO as the largest collection of preserved ancient wooden structures in the world. It is called the Forbidden City because no one could enter or leave the palace without the emperor’s permission. According with the tradition, before meeting the emperor you should have pass 5 gates, so here we are…
Inside the palace there is also a museum with different artefacts found around China including some terracotta warriors from Terracotta Army in Xi’an.
Emperor’s mother of course had her house inside the Forbidden City and every time the emperor wanted to visit her mother he needed to ask for her permission first.
Her house was surrounded by trees and roses garden, is really lovely.
The ceiling of one of the pavilions which has a dragon.
Emperor’s corner of creativity.
- Photo credit: Popsicle Society – Forbidden City, Beijing
It took us around 2 hours to visit the Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City without queuing.
After lunch we visited the Temple of Heaven which is an imperial complex of religious buildings situated in the southeastern part of central Beijing. The complex was used to be visited by the Emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties for annual ceremonies of prayer to heaven for good harvest. The emperors were considered as God’s sons and they needed to pray and give offers to God so that the people can have a good harvest.
It took us around 1 hour to visit the Temple of Heaven and after that we went to a traditional part of Beijing, the old fish market. A lovely place where you can eat or do some shopping or like us just enjoying the view.
We stayed at Crowne Plaza Beijing Wangfujing hotel, which is along the popular belt of Wangfujing Avenue, so at the end of the day, with just a short walk we enjoyed a little bit of Beijing by night.
I’m not a driver, but look at this little cute car 🚗 . I think I would like one too 😉
After a good breakfast, we were ready for our second day of adventure and this time we were headed to see The Great Wall of China, one of my travel bucket-list.
After a short trip of 1:30h by car, enjoying a little bit of Beijing outskirts, surrounded by fruit trees like apricots, pears and cherries trees, we reached Mutianyu Great Wall. The climate is similar to European climate so the plants and trees are the same from back home. Was so lovely seeing them, especially the geraniums and petunias that usually back home are the most common flowers of our balconies.
The Great Wall from Mutianyu is a section located in Huairou District, 70 kilometres (43 mi) northeast of the center of the Beijing, built in the Ming dynasty, and it is one of the best-preserved parts of the Great Wall, used to serve as the northern barrier defending the capital and the imperial tombs. It is the section with most dense watchtowers, there is one every 800m.
There are three methods of ascent and four methods of descent to choose from. To go up you can choose from 4000+ steps, a two-rider chairlift or four-rider gondola lift up from the foothills to the level of the wall, which runs along the ridges above. You may use these lifts also to descend. Or you may choose to descent by a single-rider personal wheeled toboggan. This allows single riders to descend from the wall to the valley on a winding metal track.
And guess what? Of course we have chosen the stairs 😉 We wanted to enjoy the beautiful nature as it was a beautiful sunny and windy spring day.
And when we reached the top we were speechless. I’ll let the pictures speak for me.
After wonderful 2 hours spent on the Great Wall, with more than 40 minutes of intense exercise and more than 4 km walk, with our eyes pleased to see the amazing nature, with our hearts full of joy, we had our lunch and headed back to the city.
Since we did not walk enough, we decided to visit CBD or Central Business District, the new part of Beijing in the afternoon, so we walked from our hotel, around other 4-5 km 😊 In this way we could enjoy a little bit of Beijing.
After a few cocktails we headed back to the hotel, another 4-5 km of walk 😉
Now, what you can eat in Beijing you will ask…well starting from fresh cherries that you can pick them yourself when you descent the Great Wall, obviously the traditional Peking duck, chicken, pork, beef, mutton skewers, Chinese food: veggies, shrimps, sweet & sour pork, to wonderful pizza, cold-cuts, delicious foie gra, decadent cheesecake to surprise, surprise a huge burger from Burger King immediately after you descent the Great Wall 😉 And of course all these accompanied with beers 🍺 and cocktails 🍸, as every trip must be celebrated 😉
And these were our 2 days in Beijing, an amazing experience. In only 2 days you can see and do a lot but without being overtired. To not waste time, we had a local guide and we told him what we wanted to see and he made it happen without the need of queuing. Beijing can be very crowded and you may end up queuing to enter the attraction even 2 hours per attraction so is always better to get a guide. He will organise everything and you can only simple enjoy it.
The weather was very nice, sunny and windy, during the day with 22-25 degrees Celsius, and 15-18 degrees Celsius in the evening, a classic spring day in Europe.
Just perfect. We couldn’t ask for more.
And time to go back home and start planning the new adventure 😉
Hope you had a pleasant trip 😉💕 Thank you all for reading!
