Beijing Off the Beaten Path: 4 Day Plan
Four days finally gives you room for the Summer Palace, big enough that bolting it onto another day shortchanges both. Everything before it follows the same rhythm every good Beijing trip does: book the ticketed sights first, wander the unticketed ones second, and let the fourth day be the one with the least urgency.
Book these before you go:
- Forbidden City real-name ticket (releases 8pm Beijing time, exactly 7 days ahead)
- Tiananmen Square’s separate WeChat reservation
- Your Mutianyu transfer or a small-group Wall tour
- Lama Temple’s mandatory timed-entry booking (online or WeChat, for every visitor)
| Day | Focus | Rough cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tiananmen, Forbidden City, Jingshan Park | ¥150-250 |
| 2 | Mutianyu Great Wall, cable car and toboggan | ¥300-450 |
| 3 | Temple of Heaven, Houhai and Shichahai hutongs | ¥100-180 |
| 4 | Summer Palace, Lama Temple, Wangfujing or Sanlitun | ¥150-250 |
Day 1: Tiananmen and the Forbidden City
Tiananmen Square needs its own WeChat reservation, one to seven days ahead, passport required, plus airport-style security at the gate. The Forbidden City is a separate real-name booking, released at 8pm Beijing time exactly seven days before your date, and weekend slots vanish within minutes. Go through the Qianmen gate, it clears faster than the rest, and budget three to four hours inside. Peak season (April-October) runs ¥60, low season ¥40, Treasure and Clock Galleries ¥10 each extra. Closed Mondays, except the ones that fall on a public holiday.
Exit the north gate into Jingshan Park (¥2) rather than lunch, and climb to Wanchun Pavilion for the best rooftop view of the palace anywhere in the city. Lunch on jianbing (street crepe, ¥8-15) nearby, then dinner at Siji Minfu for Peking duck, ¥154-259 for the whole bird, no visitor markup.
Day 2: Mutianyu over Badaling
Badaling is closest and most famous, which is exactly why it’s also the most crowded, tour bus after tour bus rolling in from mid-morning. Mutianyu, roughly ninety minutes out, suits almost everyone better: well restored, a cable car up (¥100 one-way, ¥140 return), and a toboggan run back down that turns the descent into the day’s actual highlight. Leave by 7:30am, give the whole day to it, and unwind back in the city with copper-pot lamb hotpot at Donglaishun (¥100-150pp).
Day 3: Temple of Heaven and the hutongs
Morning at the Temple of Heaven, ¥15 park-only or ¥34 combined in peak season, timed for the locals doing tai chi and playing cards before the tour groups show up. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests is built without a single nail, worth a proper look rather than just a photo. Afternoon and evening belong to the hutongs; skip Nanluoguxiang’s craft-beer strip if you want quieter lanes and head instead to Houhai and Shichahai, or Wudaoying and Fangjia hutong for a bowl of zhajiangmian (noodles in fermented soybean paste, ¥20-35) before dark.
Day 4: The Summer Palace and the Lama Temple
The Summer Palace earns its own morning and most of the afternoon, ¥30 peak season or ¥20 low, a lake ringed by pavilions, bridges, and the Long Corridor, a covered walkway painted with thousands of individual scenes that most visitors walk straight past without noticing. Budget a genuine half day here rather than rushing it, and pack decent shoes; the grounds are bigger than they look on a map and the paths are stone, not carpet.
On the way back into the city center, stop at the Lama Temple (Yonghegong), ¥25 flat, though it now requires a mandatory timed-entry booking online or via WeChat for every visitor, foreign included, so sort that the night before. Close the day in Wangfujing or Sanlitun: Wangfujing for the shopping street (skip the snack street’s scorpion and starfish skewers, they’re a photo-op aimed at tourists, not dinner), Sanlitun for its Taikoo Li open-air mall and the bar street behind it. Either way, four days of early starts and passport checks earns you one night where the only booking is a dinner reservation.
Where to sleep
Four nights is long enough that location actually matters. Dongcheng, somewhere between the Forbidden City and Wangfujing, keeps the first three days walkable, and it’s still a short DiDi hop out to the Summer Palace and Lama Temple on day four. Compare rates on Agoda before booking; if nightlife matters more than convenience, Sanlitun puts you closer to dinner on the last night but adds ten to fifteen minutes onto every other day’s commute.
Getting around
Tap a foreign contactless Visa or Mastercard directly at any metro turnstile, no card top-up or app setup needed. DiDi covers the Great Wall transfer and airport runs equally well; link a foreign card to your Alipay or WeChat wallet first, since cards added directly inside the DiDi app are often blocked by the home bank.
Before you go
Set up a VPN before you fly, since VPN providers’ own sites are blocked once you’re behind the firewall trying to install one, and Google, Maps, WhatsApp, and Instagram won’t load regardless. Carry your actual passport, not a photo of it, for the Forbidden City and Tiananmen. Near Wangfujing, the Tiananmen approaches, or the Lama Temple gate, wave off anyone offering tea or an art viewing; it’s the same scripted pitch every time.
Want less ground covered? The 3 day version drops the Summer Palace day. Want more? The 5 day plan adds a dedicated Ming Tombs morning and 798 Art District. Treating Beijing as a base for the wider country instead, see Offbeat Beijing and Beyond .