Another free morning - I just bummed around in my room checking photos, packing etc. We said goodbye to the Novotel at 11 and headed north to the Summer Palace. This is another set of temples etc set in parkland and an absolutely ginormous lake. Again, it was great just to sit and watch the locals do their stuff. After lunch I wandered for a few hours through the grounds until we all met up and headed to the Beijing North Railway Station to catch our overnight train to Xian. As you would expect, the station was chaotic with probably all of the Chinese population apparently wanting to travel at the same time as us.
Beijing is a massive city. It has many incredibly modern - even futuristic - buildings, a modern subway and highway system, and all the other aspects of a large international city. But there are so many BIG buildings - I guess they're apartments - that just go on forever. In other big cities I've been in - NY, Tokyo, Launceston - there's the major CBD area that then levels out, but here the massive buildings just seem to continue for a long, long way - imagine 10, 15, 20 storey buildings stretching out to Parramatta and beyond.
The weather has been pretty good so far - one drizzly morning only. The sky is a constant grey haze - I'm not sure how much is pollution and how much is just atmospheric humidity, which Ewen told me is quite common in Asian cities. It's not physically irritating or disturbing, but photographically it's giving us the shits! A bit of blue sky and some directional sunlight would make for a nice change.
The weather has been pretty good so far - one drizzly morning only. The sky is a constant grey haze - I'm not sure how much is pollution and how much is just atmospheric humidity, which Ewen told me is quite common in Asian cities. It's not physically irritating or disturbing, but photographically it's giving us the shits! A bit of blue sky and some directional sunlight would make for a nice change.
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