The gloriously imperial park entrance.
You might ask if I ever get tired of telling the same cheesy jokes in my trip reports. The answer is: not really, nope.
Hordes of tourists out and about today. Such an awesome day for it too!!!
Beihai is basically a huge lake, with a nice big island in the middle of it.
The famous monument here is the Buddhist Stupa at the top of the hill on the island. You can see this from the Jingshan park just to the east.
The stupa is massive and dominates the scenery.
I love how the shadows are so long, even midday in late autumn.
There is, of course, a cool bridge you take to get to the island.
And what self-respecting Chinese park could go more than 2-300m without a gate.
I started out the visit by walking around the "Round City" area, a raised and round little compound within the park.
It has lots of old Chinese buildings.
And trees.
And buildings right next to trees.
There is a large Buddhist shrine in the middle.
This couple was getting pretty amorous, but the girl was kinda nervous. She's starting right at the camera here hahah.
This is looking south towards Zhonghai and Nanhai. And bad Beijing traffic.
And this is me thinking myself far more clever than I truly am with blocks of concrete and my camera.
The main Buddhist shrine thingie again.
Okay, that's enough of that, to the main island!
Crossing the (slanty, apparently) bridge.
Did you notice that there's a huge Buddhist stupa at the top of the hill on the island?
But at least there's another gate on the other side of the bridge!
You walk through a succession of little shrines as you work your way up the stairs to the top of the hill.
They're very ... Buddhist-y.
The Chinese are nothing if not helpful.
Continuing up the hill.
Granny's kicking everybody's butt!
The complex is much larger than it seems from the ground.
You can see the Forbidden City easily from here.
Continuing right along.
Still have a ways more to go up.
The final set of stairs up. These are so serious they've since put some new metal/wood ones on top of the old stone ones.
Walking up, more nice views.
Finally at the top, these two decided to rest for a while.
That's Jingshan park over there.
And this is the giant White stupa. No going inside, but it's a commanding presence.
I think a lot of locals find this crap stunningly dull and only come out of a sense of duty or something.
This is a really nice view of the city, park, and lake, with a huge red pole right in the middle. D'oh
Still resting ....
What's this? Caves? Ima go check it out!
Whoa, that's a pretty serious stupa-eclipse.
This is a panorama looking north over Beihai towards Houhai.
Looking down at the northern (bigger) part of the Beihai lake...
You can pay these poor freezing girls to put on ancient imperial costumes and have your photo taken.
You're never far from city here in China.
Okay, finally at the caves, let's see what's inside.
Spooky!
Whoa, more buddhist gods and idols and the like.
And scary painted tree roots.
Help! I'm rapped!
Okay, here's the low-down on the caves.
The low-down in Chinese.
Continuing my way down the hill towards the north.
Imitation Imperial Restaurant? That's waaay better than authentic Imperial Restauranting!
I love these painted old-style Chinese structures.
In the summer, there are ferries that will take you around the park to various gates.
This is the way in to the fake imperial restauarnt.
There were some beautiful sounds coming from here as I was walking past.
So I checked it out.
This flute guy was playing along with some music on a speaker. He was pretty good. Impossible to get it quiet enough to only catch him though. 
Continuing my way around the park.
More gate-goodness!
More pretty bridges.
There's a cute white kitty hanging out in there somewhere.
Dangerous for drowning!!!!
These girls were horsing around. The end result being one of them ended up tied to the pillar.
Imperial concession stands and dining areas (real, evidently).
Okay, I made my way to Ritan park now, way on the other side of the city. I just walked around taking some pictures of the "autumnness" of it.
This is one of those torture parks where they have little exercise machines that the locals are always using.
That's the huge new Beijing World Trade Centre III down in Guomao.
Ready for a panorama of the sun temple ???
My latest panorama of the actual temple here in Ritan ...
Ritan is a favourite for kite-flying with the locals.
Even if the winds aren't very strong ...
The Stone Boat Cafe.
In the summer, it's fun to count how long before some drunk person falls off the bridge into the (icky) pond.
Alright, more taijiquan awesomeness.
I love walking around Beijing in the autumn. It's so pleasant.