Beijing’s subway system is amazing. Just 2 yuan per ride, as far as you want to go. That’s about 33 cents. And you can take it far. Today, we took it all the way to the Summer Palace.

It was fun to explore. The grounds are enormous, and basically divided into two sections: the hill and the lake. The hill is more formally called the Longevity Hill. The palace and several temples and halls are placed all over the hill and provide amazing viewpoints of the surrounding area.

The lake is encircled by a path with bridges and towers and other picturesque scenery. We walked over to the 17 Arches Bridge (which connects to a little island in the lake) and back. We didn’t go all the way around the lake because that’s just crazy.

Here’s a few pictures from our walk to the island and back, and a few from the gardens we explored.