Aman Summer Palace or Aman at Summer Palace is actually a beautiful, traditional chinese style hotel at the back of summer Palace, you actually have your own private entrance to the Summer Palace (which you can read more about in the Things To Do in Beijing section. If this were in any other city, I’d probably be raving about it so I’ll try to be fair.
First up, Aman Summer Palace is a courtyard style hotel and each of the (standard) rooms are located in a courtyard shared with 1 other room, at least they one we stayed in. It’s still quite private but I can imagine if you had some noisy neighbours it wouldn’t be great. The rooms themselves are a bit dark, not dingy, but even with windows and the curtains open, there’s not much light getting in. We had a problem with finding one of the light switches and couldn’t for the life of us work out where it was. We had to call someone to ask and instead of just telling us over the phone they had to send someone, I guess they call that service. No big deal, other than that the rooms are big, beds comfortable and good bathroom. Not much to complain about with the rooms. Remember this is traditional chinese stye, so you’re not going to find Bose sound systems and all the latest gadgets.
Aman Summer Palace
There’s an afternoon tea place inside Aman Summer Palace, it’s got a nice little pond outside and you can sit outside and have a coffee. Nice bit nothing more than that. We also ate at bot of the other restaurants, honestly I can’t remember what the food was like so it must have been neither outstanding or that bad. Everything in the hotel is done nicely and you can let kids scooter around the property.
It’s hard to get excited about a hotel in a city you don’t like, but I must say, this is an excellent hotel and if for some reason I had to go back to Beijing, I’d have no trouble staying here and would recommend it if you’re trying to find somewhere nice to stay.
