Beijing 北京

Beijing is not a single postcard of yellow roofs. The useful way to hold it is in layers: the palace and the parks inside the old city, the hutongs just north of Beihai where breakfast is still cooked on a drum griddle, and the ridgeline an hour and a half north where the wall actually climbs. Give the Forbidden City a morning, not a dash between tour groups, and book the timed ticket with the same document you will show at the gate. Evenings belong to roast duck or a bowl of zhajiangmian, not to another monument.

Mutianyu in autumn. Treat the wall as a full day, not a backdrop between meetings.

See

1. 1

   Forbidden City 故宫

   Timed entry. Closed Mondays. Enter from the south and leave north toward Jingshan if your knees allow the hill.

2. 2

   Mutianyu Great Wall 慕田峪

   The calmest famous section. Cable car up, walk a stretch, toboggan down if you like. Skip Badaling unless your tour gives you no choice.

3. 3

   Beihai and the hutongs 北海 · 胡同

   Rent nothing. Walk the lanes north of the lake in the morning, when deliveries and breakfast stalls are the traffic.

4. 4

   Temple of Heaven 天坛

   Go early for the park, not only the hall. The echo wall is a sideshow; the cypresses are the point.

Eat

• Peking duck 北京烤鸭

  Order the bird, not a set banquet you will not finish. A known shop beats a hotel carving station.

• Zhajiangmian 炸酱面

  Wheat noodles, pork sauce, a pile of raw scallion and radish you fold in yourself.

• Jianbing 煎饼果子

  Breakfast from a street griddle. Ask them to go easy on the sauce if you want to taste the egg.