Today I headed out on the Beijing underground to the Kunming Hu (Summer Palace) at the cost of 2 Yuan (20p) via lines 4, 10 and 5 in the north west of the city. Before I left, I had checked to see if there were any caches in the area and downloaded the maps and info to my phone via the hotel wi-fi and then by the time I left the hotel I had forgotten to pick up my TB and therefore didn't bother looking when got there. I guess I will just have to leave it somewhere else another day.

The Summer Palace started out life as the Garden of Clear Ripples in 1750 (Reign Year 15 of Emperor Qianlong). Artisans reproduced the garden architecture styles of various palaces in China. Kunming Lake was created by extending an existing body of water to imitate the West Lake in Hangzhou. The palace complex suffered two major attacks--during the Anglo-French allied invasion of 1860 (with the Old Summer Palace also ransacked at the same time), and during the Boxer Rebellion, in an attack by the eight allied powers in 1900. The garden survived and was rebuilt in 1886 and 1902. In 1888, it was given the current name, Yihe Yuan. It served as a summer resort for Empress Dowager Cixi, who diverted 30 million taels of silver, said to be originally designated for the Chinese navy (Beiyang Fleet), into the reconstruction and enlargement of the Summer Palace. In December 1998, UNESCO included the Summer Palace on its World Heritage List. It declared the Summer Palace "a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design. The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value." It is a popular tourist destination but also serves as a recreational park.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_Palace

This evening at 6pm I met up with the rest of our team, there were 10 of us in total but 2 people had not turned up yet and also our tour guide, Roy. Hopefully I will get evryone's name right, Craig & Jessica, Tom & Sarah, Claire, Emma and Jane. We went through the usual introduction, checking of passports and insurance peperwork and then the 9 of us decided to go out for dinner together. Roy offered us a selection of resturants and we decided to go to a fairly decent one, but not too expensive.

We went to a very popular resturant "Beijing Huajia Yiyuan Restuarant" and sampled the famous Beijing duck and several other dishes. We all had a couple of beers too and the bill only came to 110 Yuan (£11). It was all very good, and I can highly reccomend the Beijing Duck especially. As a lot of people had only turned up today on their flights we all had an early night.