China – Flower Blossoms & Peony Festival Tour
April 8th to April 22nd, 2008
 

In the afternoon we paid a visit to the Summer Palace, the grand garden park of the Empress Dowager, Cixi. The Summer Palace is the largest imperial garden in the world. It contains classical Chinese garden architecture. The initial construction of the Summer Palace started in the year 1750, commissioned by Emperor Qianlong as a gift for his mother's birthday. The construction took fifteen years to complete. It had the name "Qingyi Yuan" (Garden of Clear Ripples) at that time. Plundering by foreign troops in the year 1860 destroyed most of the buildings, but they were renovated in 1888 by Empress Dowager Cixi, who was said to have embezzled funds of the Imperial Navy to build the garden. After the year 1949, the garden became a park and got the name Yiheyuan (Summer Palace).
http://www.sino-cs.ac.uk/html/Heritage/h_yhy.htm

Then we visited Beijing Botanical Garden…it was a wonderful place to walk around, here I found some ladies getting photographs taken for something and could not resist taking their pictures. Love the costumes.

This evening, we enjoyed a Peking Duck dinner.

April 11: Full day tour to visit the Great Wall at Badaling, the most well preserved section of the wall and the only man-made structure that you can view from the moon. Built in the 7th century BC and built to keep out the warring invaders from the north, but additional sections were extended eastward for nearly 6,700 kilometers until the 16th century AD.
http://www.travelchinaguide.com/china_great_wall/scene/beijing/badaling.htm
We also visited a ceramic factory…