A boat made of marble? Well there's your problem!
JULY 8TH, 2018
Buddhist Incense Tower
We started the morning with a trip to the Summer Palace. The palace dates to the Qing dynasty. We began on Suzhou Street, which was an old shopping street along a lake, and is now mostly tourist shops where people tried to sell us boat-ride tickets. Then, we hiked up several flights of stairs, took more pictures with locals, and finally made it to the top of the hill where there was a Buddhist temple. We walked to the Buddhist Incense Tower, a pagoda with a thousand-armed Buddhist statue.
Marble boat
We saw the marble boat, actually a wood-frame surrounded by stones to look like marbles that is 118 feet long. The most interesting part of the boat is that it was funded with money set aside to fund the navy and instead went to funding an immobile boat for decoration. We decided to take a dragon boat back across the lake so we didn’t have to hike back up the hill in the incredible heat, and enjoyed the views of the park from the lake.
For lunch, we had traditional Peking Duck and watched the carving process up close. One of the servers saw us struggling and showed us how to put the duck, with other condiments, into a wrap and eat it that way. She did it gracefully with chop sticks, we not so much.
Next, we visited the Temple of Heaven, another scenic park with a stunning temple as it’s focal point. It was later in the day and the temple itself was closed so this also meant the tour groups were headed out and we could actually enjoy the peace and quiet here. We walked through the covered walkways and rose garden. We noticed that every park we go to all the older locals actually hang out and play at them. All around they were working out together, playing card and board games. We noticed that this is not really something we see people doing back home.
Cutting up our duck!
On our way home we found some ice cream, which is quickly becoming our staple food to survive the heat and walked through the hutongs back to the hotel. We also made our first street food purchase at a little stall and bought a pastry filled with vegetables.
