Summer Palace

It's Tuesday and we are visiting the Summer Palace.

West of Beijing where there are many trees is the summer palace with 5 imperial gardens. The man-made lake covers 75% of the nearly 2 square miles of palace property. The excavated soil, accumulated from the making of the lake, was used to make Longevity Hill upon which stand many of the palace buildings. It served as a summer palace for Empress Dowager Cixi, who used money originally designated for the Chinese Navy to enlarge the palace. The Chinese believe that this diversion of funds weakened the Navy possibly causing them to lose the first Sino-Japanese war, fought in 1894-1895 primarily over control of Korea.

We took a little ride on this cute boat around

Kunming Lake at the Summer Palace.

The bridge to another palace building.

With roommate, Maria.

In a room at the top of this building resides a multi-hand, multi-eyed Buddha.

More stairs---multiple sets of stairs every day! 

We were treated to an acrobatic show in the afternoon. It was an array of typical Chinese acrobatics including many things that seemed very unsafe--multiple motorcycles riding in a spherical cage, chair balancing, bowl balancing. Very scary!