September 15 (Wednesday): Summer Palace (頤和園) & Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace 圓明園)

We took the MTR (over 20 stops) to the Summer Palace (頤和園). Due to its size we spent over three hours there. Shortly after we were inside the palace we came across an old calligrapher using a big brush writing Chinese characters (mostly names of the tourists). And he did write my wife’s name and in two different styles too. We’d a quick lunch at a noodle shop inside the palace and then began our long walk. To conserve our energy for the Old Summer Palace after getting down from the Longevity Hill we took the Kunming Lake ferry back to the front entrance.

We then went by tricycle (RMB8 and we couldn’t get a taxi) to Yuanmingyuan (Old Summer Palace 圓明園). By design (it’s the shortest route) the cyclist dropped us at the west entrance. And we’d to pay extra RMB5 each for the park car ride to the south or main entrance which is the nearest point to the European Style Palace ruins. After our failed attempt to negotiate the labyrinth in light of time constraint, we proceeded to the famed ruins. The entire place seemingly is larger than the Forbidden City and Summer Palace. There’s a lot of lotus but unfortunately most flowers had since withered. It took us almost a 45-minute walk back to the main entrance and the adjacent MTR station. We clocked on average 18,000 steps of walk in the last seven days. And today we broke the 20,000 mark (and 22,424 tomorrow and 21,912 on coming Sunday).

We patronised Annie’s Italian Restaurant again for dinner and ordered Caesar Salad, Bolognese Spaghetti and Tiramisu which were good.


Camera Equipment:
Camera: Nikon D3 & F6 plus Panasonic LX3
Lens: AFS 17-35/f2.8 (mostly on F6) and AFS 70-200/f2.8 (D3)
Singh-Ray Filters: i) Gold N Blue Polarizer, ii) LB Color Combo Polarizer, iii) Daryl Benson ND-3 Reverse Graduate and iv) Galen Rowell ND-3G Hard Step.
Film (for F6): 8 rolls of Kodak Ektar and 1 roll of Fujicolor – all 100 ISO

NB: Photos without metadata were taken by Nikon F6, the film camera