Summer Palace & Beijing National Stadium, Beijing 2009 - Day 4

It took us about an hour from subway Dongsi to Xiyuan station. It's quite a long journey from our hotel and we need to walk and transit subway line a few times too. Upon arriving at Xiyuan station, we still need to walk about 10 minutes before reaching Summer Palace. Having the largest royal park and being well preserved, it was designated, in 1960 by the State Council, as a Key Cultural Relics Protection Site of China. Containing examples of the ancient arts, it also has graceful landscapes and magnificent constructions. The Summer Palace is the archetypal Chinese garden, and is ranked amongst the most noted and classical gardens of the world. In 1998, it was listed as one of the World Heritage Sites by UNESCO. Summer Palace is really a huge garden and we only managed to cover about 60% or less. After spending more than 6 hours here, there is still so many red LED dot on our electronic map. Seriously, this place is damn huge! We love Suzhou Street really much. The scenery here is kind of peaceful and beautiful with shops along the riverside. By looking at the charm of Suzhou Street in Summer Palace, it gave me a sudden urge to visit Suzhou in future asap. We had our lunch here while simply enjoying Suzhou Street scenery. I have really nothing much to talk about Summer Palace so let’s roll up some picture here and hope you enjoyed it. Here is some picture we took during sunset at Summer Palace. I don't think so that one could finish walking with all the POI covered. Yes, maybe you could do that but it will be like amazing race (quickie) kinda thing. A famous travelling website said that Summer Palace recommended time of visit is about one and a half hour. He must be real kidding! Our next destination is Beijing National Stadium and we took subway to Tiananmen West station. According to my research of direction in Google map, it shows that the national stadium located somewhere near to Tiananmen West station. Daphne was smart enough to ask the station staff before exiting the station. The staffs look at us and reconfirmed the place we wanted to go and she said it's impossible to walk from this station. Then I only I know that Google map gave me the wrong direction! Check the printscreen below! The national stadium is the one I circle up and not the B destination. We quickly make our way there by going back to the train and did some interchange after getting the direction from the staff. Our leg is already suffering and begging for mercy and yet we still managed to crawl there. Bird Nest Stadium structure are truly amazing and Daph straight away knew that this stadium is very hard to construct. She works in a construction firm so she knew particularly well on building structure and material. The design, which originated from the study of Chinese ceramics, implemented steel beams in order to hide supports for the retractable roof; giving the stadium the appearance of a "Bird's nest". The retractable roof was later removed from the design after inspiring the stadium's most recognizable aspect. Due to the stadium's outward appearance, it was nicknamed "The Bird's Nest" Beijing Nationals Aquatics Centre in the other hand is simply marvellous too. The outer wall is based on a structure devised from the natural formation of bubbles in soap foam. Many people believe Water Cube to be the fastest Olympic pool in the world. The proof? The Aquatics Centre saw 25 world records broken during Beijing 2008 Olympics. It is 1 meter deeper than most Olympic pools. Up to a certain limit, beyond which swimmers will lose their sense of vision, deeper pools allow the waves to dissipate down to the bottom, leading to less water disturbance to the swimmers. We spend about one hour and a half here despite our leg not listening to us anymore. We really tortured our poor leg in these 4 days. We went back to our hotel and call it a day.