Beijing – Summary

What we liked most / our highlights (the places need the “vote” of the 5 family members to be included in this list):

• The Great Wall
• The Forbidden City
• The guided visit in the hutongs
• The Temple of Heaven Park
• The evening in Sanlitun (drink on the terrace of Migas and pizza at Bottega)

The following places nearly made it to the top list (short of one “vote”):

• The “Egg”
• The Snack Street

What we liked least:

• Of course the difficulty related to the language barrier.
• The (too much) time in metro, which is always a bit sad (no view). However, the Beijing metro is very efficient and quite easy (everything is translated); but the walks are long in the stations themselves to change between lines.

As always, we couldn’t do / see all what we expected (and as often the restaurants where we planned to go without the kids were unfortunately the ones that were dropped from the list).

To do / visit during next stay:

• Summer Palace (one of the 3 main tourist sites of Beijing with the Forbidden City and the Great Wall and also the highlight of our Belgian ‘world tourers’ friends)
• Zaha Hadid’s curvy and sci-fi-like Galaxy Soho building
• Olympic Park at night
• White Cloud Temple (with Taoist monks)
• Panjiayuan (flea) Market
• One evening out in Sanlitun (without kids)
• Restaurants: The Georg (a gastronomic fusion cuisine with a Scandinavian twist), Black Sesame Kitchen (a communal table in a kitchen with a 10-course menu) and the veggie King’s Joy.
• Lessons of Tai chi, Chinese languages, Mah-jong, dumplings.
• Rent a bike.