Fragrant Hills Park - Xianglu Peak

Starting at 7 in the morning it feels quite late now - originally the plan was to party tonight but I overslept that. I don't care. Would have been to expensive anyway and the day so far was good enough.
Not all information from yesterday were quite accurate.. but so what...
The hiking trip started with a 40 min bus tour to the Xiangshan Park. It is a public park at the foot of the Western Mountains in the northwestern part of Beijing. The highlight is to climb the 557 meters high Xianglu Peak, but there are several sights around like architectural reliefs from different emperors, temples and also the last residence of Mao Zedong and the former headquarters of the communist party. A lot of stuff was destroyed by the French allies around 1900 (just like in the garden of 10.000 springs).
This park is a venue of rest for a lot of Beijing people and their families - the air is noticeable better and the nice pine forest is a welcome contrast to the city sights of the close capital. Accordingly the park is crowded with people. Its not like a lonely hike on a hill - its a mass phenomena. Just everybody rushes on the peak and back. But still I felt some peaceful moments - sweating like an idiot all the time.

As we arrived at the full professional peak - with peak-stone, peak-shop, and peak-toilets, we found a nice picnic place. Everybody contributed to the whole group. And everybody wanted everybody to taste his or her food. That was very different from what it would have been at home... felt so hospitably - so sharing - so... it was very nice. After this extensive picnicking we played some games like the "killer game" (aka. Mafia or Die Werwölfe...) and some card games.
My Chinese classmates were quite communicative and we had a lot of fun. Thank you very much! So much fun without any alcohol - quite impressive ;-)

On the way back we looked at several other temples and ancient stuff. My personal highlight was here the "Shuangqing Villa". I wouldn't call it a villa but once it has been the residence of Mao Zedong and also an early venue for the headquarters of the Central Committee of the CP. Unfortunately picture taking was not allowed inside...

Well, so far for my sightseeing from today. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. I hope you have a look at the pictures inside this album.

Coming up for tomorrows program: The Zoo ;-) Don't get to exited!