in-all-places: Beijing and the best of my long weekend there

It was the golden week when we finally made it to Beijing; after Shanghai (plus one rainy afternoon in Hangzhou) Beijing felt somehow more distinctively Chinese. We had a long list of must see and must do but we were sooner reminded that while the chinese architecture is impressive, the distances are vast and throngs of people are always on the way everywhere you go; tiresome!

So this is what we get by the end of our long weekend: Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, Temple of Heaven and the Great Wall - Mutianyu section. Plus Houhai Lake, hub of one well preserved hutong (old town) in Beijing and Drum and Bell towers - both on the same site.

Forbidden City: it was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming dynasty to the end of the Qing dynasty. It is located in the center of Beijing and it was just a short walk distance from our location. Not gonna get into the history of the place - enormous mind you!- just keep in mind that it is huge and usually over crowded; we started from Tian An Men side and walk till the end.

We book a trip to the Wall from a nearby small agent on Wang Fu Jing shopping Street- we choose Mutianyu section of the Great Wall mainly because has good reviews as being beautiful and less busy. The drive to the wall was also instructive, we could see a bit of the Beijung surroundings; we took a cable car up to the Wall and a hike on the wall itself - it can be quite intense.

Next on the list was Tian Tan - the Temple of Heaven, considered to be the most holy of Beijing's imperial temples. It has been described as "a masterpiece of architecture and landscape design” and it was indeed a pleasant trip mostly because the temple is surrounded by a huge garden full of roses!