Day 4 - Summer Palace

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Today was a relative breeze in terms of scheduling. We left Taishan at 9:00am following a simple continental buffet breakfast at The Four Points Hotel, Tai'an, in need of some deep tissue calf massage from walking down 7,000 steps in blizzard conditions the day before. I can hardly walk today, but managed the 470km top down drive to Beijing in 6 hours and 30 minutes. Yesterday was a freak winter day, but today I managed to add to my right arm and facial tan on what seemed like a perfect summer day. After checking in to the Aman at The Summer Palace at 4:00pm, the Aman staff led us to their "secret gate" to the Palace. Unfortunately although the gate was exclusively for Aman guests, once inside, we were once again amongst the whole populace of China strolling around the beautiful Kunming Lake. Not sure if anyone in our party took any good pictures despite the beautiful sunset, but the Aman staff have kindly agreed to let us through the secret gate tomorrow morning at 7:00am. The Summer Palace opens to the general public at 8:30am, so we'll have the whole place to ourselves for 90 minutes! And after breakfast it'll be off to see The Great Wall.

This evening we finished with a mostly vegetarian dinner with the exception of Peking Duck in Peking.

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Comments

[Raelan]

Livin' the life!!
sounds like the adventure continues! I'm so happy to hear that your trip co tiniest to go well. All the best to youmy blogging buddy :) Rae