Today is Sunday, so we try to not spend money at all. We bought food last night for snacks and meals and we usually plan things that don't charge admission. We succeeded with Olympic Park; failed with Beihai Park.
Beihai Park is a lake just west of the Forbidden City. There is an island in the lake and a few sites and landscaped areas surrounding it. We found out last night that there was an admission fee, but the island and several sites were additional. I thought it'd be worth it to spend the extra money to get the through ticket. I was dead wrong. So if you go to Beihai Park, just pay the regular admission.
You can access almost everything without paying extra. The island...
the village...
the parks and walkway...
and the pagodas and everything else.
The one thing you can't enter is the round city at the southern side, but that's closed now and they didn't tell us that. The white pagoda at the top if the island is solid, so you can't go in it, and the temple below it is nothing special. Trees block the view from the top, so you can't really even see the Forbidden City.
Anyway, I'm done with my rant. I'm more just upset at myself for spending the money when I knew we were trying not to, and then feeling ripped off made it worse.
But here are some other pictures from the park...
But here are some other pictures from the park...
Olympic Park was cool though, and huge and surprisingly busy. We got off the subway at the south end and walked straight up through the middle. To the right is the Nest...
and to the left is the Water Cube.
There were lots of vendors selling kites and other souvenirs. The kites were unique and cool. It was one large kite at the end, but along the string were a few dozen smaller ones. You can see two in this picture.
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