Weekend in Beijing: hiking the Great Wall, and visiting the Summer Palace
- Elizabeth Hamstra
- 21 sep 2025
- 3 minuten om te lezen
Our itinerary and the hotel
I'm going to do this blog a little differently from my other travel posts because there isn't all that much practical information I can add. I'll simply tell you how we got there, which hotel we booked, and which section of the Wall we visited. I do think our choice of section was an important one.
On Friday, after work, we took the train from Hongqiao Station to Beijing. We arrived around 22:00 and checked into our hotel. We stayed in this small hotel in the hutongs and ended up liking it a lot. It had a very nice bar and restaurant attached to it, the food and drinks were good, and the place was full of plants and character.
We left early on Saturday morning for our hike. I'll share more details about that further down. After the hike, we returned to the hotel to relax. In the evening, we wandered through some of Beijing's smaller streets, did a bit of sightseeing, had something to eat, and stopped at a few bars along the way.
On Sunday morning, we visited the Summer Palace, which I'll tell you more about later in this blog. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel for a drink before taking the train back to Shanghai.
It was a short weekend, but we absolutely loved it. It felt like a proper holiday, and we managed to see and do a lot without ever feeling rushed.
The hike
We went in June. Everything was very green, which made the views from the Wall especially nice. It was already quite hot though, so keep that in mind if you visit around the same time of year.
We visited the Jinshanling section with a guide and were very happy with that choice. The views were great and, compared to some of the more famous sections of the Wall, it was very quiet. We spent most of the hike seeing only a handful of other people.
It is not always an easy hike. We walked about 6 kilometres in fairly warm weather and some parts of the Wall are quite steep. In a few places the stones were worn and slippery and we had to hold on properly or even use our hands. A hiking pole is definitely useful.
We were also glad to have a guide with us. Jinshanling is quite far from Beijing and the Wall is, of course, enormous. It was nice not having to figure everything out ourselves and simply follow someone who knew the area. Our guide was great and we enjoyed having him with us throughout the day.
Summer palace
I'm not going to give an extensive guide to the Summer Palace, but I do want to explain why it worked so well as part of this trip.
We only had a limited amount of time in Beijing, so we had to make choices. Rather than trying to tick off all the major sights such as Tiananmen Square, we focused on places where we thought we would genuinely enjoy spending our time.
On Sunday morning, we went to the Summer Palace early, and it was incredibly quiet. We took a boat across the lake and then walked back, exploring different parts of the palace grounds and various buildings along the way. As the morning went on, it gradually became busier, so I would definitely recommend arriving as early as possible.
After visiting the Summer Palace, we headed back towards the city centre, had a great lunch, visited the Confucius Temple, and then returned to the hotel before taking the train back to Shanghai.
For us, the combination of the hotel, wandering through the hutongs, the quiet hike along the Great Wall, and the relaxed visit to the Summer Palace made for a perfect weekend. We saw a lot, but at no point did it feel rushed.
