Up late today after being out until the early hours of the morning clubbing Chinese style, and today we were
going to spend the (remainder) wandering around the Summer Palace, which is the
opposite side of the city.
I was expecting a vast open space of lawns and
lakes, interspersed with pagodas in the mist and the sounds of gentle Chinese
flutes and chimes bringing peace to everyone.
Instead, it was a heaving mass of tourists (yes, us
included) snapping photos of everything that moved and didn’t move, all crammed around the place, with nowhere to sit down in peace! It was very different to what we'd expected, but parts were really lovely. We'd hired these (rather clever GPS activated) audio guides to help us understand a bit of the attraction and history - mine in English; theirs in Mandarin - but oddly enough, the commentary was different. 
For example: when we were walking through one of the tree lined avenues, my guide started talking about the species of trees and how pretty the walk was. The Mandarin guide pointed out the ruined buildings that were ransacked, destroyed and burned to the ground by the b*stard English... 
We did manage to find a spot to drink the wine that we'd hoped to sip on a lawn somewhere - in a slightly less glamorous setting of the car park next to the exit!
I was really disappointed, so wasn’t that unhappy when we needed to speed up the pace if we wanted to get to the Art District later on.
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