The summer palace is a place I could spend a lot of time at, armed with a good book. It is set in a huge park taken up mostly by lake. Everywhere is green, with willows, peach trees, and pines. It was our third day of perfect weather, and just stunning. We started the day with our first trip on the Beijing subway (not too bad, as you just pay a flat fee to go on the line, which means our inability to pronounce our destination didn't matter!) Then we took a boat trip up to the summer palace. This involved a short speedboat crossing to the zoo (the smiles you see are above are smiles of fear!), then onto a canal boat up to the first lock, then a quick change onto a third boat which dropped us at the south end of the park (a family sitting near us was kind enough to translate all the announcements for us so we knew when to get off). Our first sight was of the absurdly steep bridge you see above, and as we walked around the lake to the north side, there were many beautiful views of the Summer Palace itself (too many photos to upload). We are very aware of the approaching Olympic Games in Beijing. Official booths are present at the major tourist traps, but more obvious is that every sight has something off limits due to construction. This was very obvious in the Forbidden City, and the pavilions that had been completed were dazzling. The gold decorations, and yellow roof tiles glinted in the sun, next to the vivid reds, blues and greens of the paint work. Sadly, the summer palace itself was also closed, but we were still able to walk up past it to the buddhist temple on the top of the hill behind it. There are great views from this hill all around, across the park to Beijing. We may well return to the park because it is just such a pleasant place to be, especially if this weather continues.