One of the main concerns in planning a holiday to Beijing is definitely to whether join an all-inclusive travel package from one of the local travel agents or, just book a flight and travel around the city by ourselves. Many are worried by the communication issues, conveniences issues as well as the proximity issues of travel sites in Beijing. But if I were you, I would definitely plan for a self guided travel to Beijing as what I did recently. One of the reasons is I hate all those travel hoaxes in all-inclusive travel packages.

Traveling to and around Beijing by ourselves is not as complicated as many may think. Public transport, travel sites, restaurants, and supermarkets have sufficient English indications to be at least understandable. Most hotels receptions could also help you somehow or other and many can speak English.

I spent 7 days in Beijing and I found traveling in Beijing is a breeze. If you ever wonder how I did it, here is my 7-days self guided travel itinerary summary to Beijing:

The Beginning

We took midnight MAS flight and arrived at Beijing Capital Airport early in the morning at 6AM. Easily accessible, the Beijing Airport Express train transferred us to Dongzhimen train station hub. Within the station itself and over the ticketing counter, we bought Yikatong card (Beijing transportation prepaid and discount card) and topped it up for our usage during this coming 7 days. From Dongzhimen, we took subway to Dengshikou station, the nearest station which is 10 minutes walk to our hotel as well as Wangfujing Street. After checking into our Sunworld Hotel, grabbing a copy of the Beijing city map, its Subway route map, packing my photography equipment in a daypack, and we were ready to explore Beijing!

The following itinerary is simply my personal preference based on our mood on that day and no strict rules being applied. As long as we have sorted out those important prerequisite elements in any successful travel, and followed those 5 steps to achieve a peace of mind trip, we can freely and with full peaces of mind exploring our destinations however we like it.

Day 1 Itinerary:

• Strolling down the Wangfujing Street in early morning from Dengshikou Street junction in the North to Dong Chang An Street junction in the South;
• We had lunch at Tianjin’s Goubulibao restaurant;
• Took a subway from Wangfujing station to Bird Nest, the national Olympic stadium of Beijing;
• Took a local bus to tour around the Beijing city centre Dongcheng district and stopped at Tiananmen Square and Qianmen;
• Strolling down the Qianmen street and had our dinner at Quanjude Beijing Roast Duck restaurant at Hepingmen;
• Took subway back to Dengshikou station, where our hotel was, and
• Buy some mineral water and instant noodles at 7-Eleven in front of our hotel and called it our first day in Beijing.

Day 2 Itinerary:

• We woke up quite late today. We had our breakfast at one of the local restaurant nearby;
• Taking subway to our main destination of the day, The Forbidden City or Palace Museum;
• We really took our own sweet time and spent the late morning and the whole afternoon in this UNESCO World Heritage Site;
• We left the Forbidden City at 4PM via East exit and walked along Donghuamen Road towards Wangfujing junction;
• We had our dinner at one of the local Home Style cooking restaurant along the street;
• When approaching Wangfujing junction, along the Donghuamen street, there is the Donghuamen Night Food market stretching as long as 1km!
• What would be the best night activities in Wangfujing? Shopping time!
• They closed shops very promptly at 10PM. We went back to our hotel;
• Along the way, there was the local famous Wangfujing Catholic church at Baishu Hutong and young Beijing people gathered at the small square in front and enjoyed themselves with singing, dancing and drinking.

Day 3 Itineary:

• The main destination of the day was The Great Wall; We woke up relatively early to catch a bus to Jishuitan. From the station we walked for another 10 minutes to Deshengmen Arrow Tower which is the main regional bus station in Beijing. Bafangda coach No. 877 is the direct bus to Badaling section of Great Wall.
• We arrived at the front hill of Badaling Great Wall. Instead of hiking up the wall (the Great Wall is quite high up from ground level), we took the pulley car cost RMB60 both ways to North Tower 4.
• From Tower 4, we slowly hiked up the steep corridor of Great Wall through Tower 5 to 7 and stopped at Tower 8, the most famous tower of Badaling Great Wall or is better known as Haohanpo (Real heroes Slope).
• We let it all hang out on the wall and admired the beautiful scenery around, albeit the visibility on that day was a real let down for me as a travel photography hobbyist.
• We left Badaling Great Wall at around 4PM and reached Wangfujing 2 hours later.
• Before calling it our 3rd day in Beijing, we did another round of shopping at Wangfujing!

Day 4 Itinerary:

• We engaged a taxi to do a city tour today;
• Our first stop was Prince Kung’s Mansion, the siheyuan styled of residence first constructed by the highly corrupted Imperial minister of He Shen ;
• We had lunch at one of the local lamien (Pulled noodles) restaurant in Hutong around Drum Tower;
• Next was The Summer Palace. The imperial summer retreat garden is so huge that we had to spend a few hours there just to briefly walk through it and along the Kunming lake and the Tower of Buddhist Incense (Fo Xiang Ge);
• After the long walk, our friendly taxi driver brought us to the Bird’s Nest stadium for a footology therapy session;
• Our night activity that day was watching Chinese Acrobatic show at Chaoyang auditorium;
• It was already close to 9:30PM when we were back to our hotel, we walked to the nearby Donghuamen night food market for our supper!

Day 5 Itinerary:

• Today, we went to Tiantan, The Temple of Heaven, which could be easily reached by subway. The compound is huge and we spent the whole morning within the park;
• At noon, we found a Bianyifang Roast Duck restaurant branch along Tiantan East Road. Need me say more? We had another roast duck meal in there!
• Tiantan East Road is another shopping street with various shops selling especially local fashion and foods, frequented mainly by local people. Jean bought quite a few jackets and jeans for Chloe and Dylan;
• Not getting enough? We went ahead and be a shop-aholic to visit Xiushuijie (Silk Street, 秀水街), the counterfeit paradise indoor market of Beijing!
• We had dinner at Wangfujing’s Snack Street at night and continued our never ending shopping spree there until all shops closed at 10PM.
• Another tiring but enjoying day in Beijing.

Day 6 Itinerary:

• The penultimate day for us in Beijing, we decided to have a rather relaxing walkabout in hutong area of Dongcheng district;
• The first travel site we went to was Yonghegong and Kongzhimiao;
• The we strolled down hutong after hutong in Nanlouguxiang area before reaching the Drum Tower;
• We had our wonderful lunch in Yaojichaogan restaurant;
• The next stop was Tobacco Porch street which led us to Houhai and Qianhai areas;
• We didn’t spend much time in Houhai and we continued to walked down the Di’anmen Dajie Road;
• We stopped at Qiulixiang, the most famous Chinese roast chestnut shop in Beijing, to have our chestnut high tea session!
• Taking a local bus to Wangfujing, we (again) had our last minute souvenirs hunting!
• We went back to our hotel early to take a good rest before catching our flight on the next day.

Day 7 Itinerary:

• We checked out our hotel and took subway to Dongzhimen station;
• We returned our Yikatong transport card here and took the Airport Express train to the Beijing Capital Airport from there;
• After checking in to our flight, we were ready to fly home again to mark the end of our immaculate journey!

The End

You can view more uploaded photos from the above Flickr slide show. This photo slide show is being updated regularly to include more travel photos of Beijing. So come back for more!

For more details on places and foods in Beijing, view also my earlier posts on The top 10 places to visit in Beijing, and The Top 13 local foods to try in Beijing. This is the end of my brief coverage of my 7-day self guided travel itinerary to Beijing. I hope it could at least give any interested traveler some guide on how you could plan for your trip to Beijing. This is just the summary of my travel to Beijing. To know more in details on each one of the travel attractions in Beijing, watch out my latest Travel stories in Beijing on this travel blog regularly or, subscribe to my free email Feeds for future updates. – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo guide to China