The Great Wall...

Got up around 7, had a nice breakfast, and then on the bus for a 1.5-2 hour trip to the Great Wall… As on all the other bus rides, our guide talked incessantly about pretty much anything that he could think of on the way… Must be something that they teach in guide school, that you have to talk about something all the time… When it is on topic, it is interesting… when not, not… And either the average person needs to hear the same point 5-10 times to have it stick, or the guides use that technique to fill the time… anyhow, he is entertaining for the most part, and I even got a short video of him in the Forbidden City just so that I could remember the experience…

The Great Wall is impressive… easily on par with anything I have seen yet… Just trying to imagine how it could have been built in the mountains, where just climbing up to the site where it is located would be incredibly difficult, in the time that it was built is hard to get your head around… We took the cable car up to the entrance point, and decided to go as far as we were allowed… I think the marker numbers they had there were from 14 to 20… We were on the Mutianyu section of the wall, and I don’t know how far the stations were, but everyone seemed to think it was at least a mile… Longest, hardest mile I have ever done… period… The last section, which was around 450 steps, was over 45 degrees up… and on top of it, my lack of liking heights came up often where you could have easily slipped and broken something at the best… and God knows how long you would wait, or if anyone would ever get there… But I did make it to the top… (couldn’t stop even at the last 25 steps or so that literally went up at 80 degrees, since a 70-80 year old chinese woman did it…) And going back was almost as hard, since station 20 is not much higher than 14, but it just keeps on going up and down, and not gradually… Took a lot of pictures since I’m pretty sure I won’t get back there again… But even though it was incredibly tiring, it was one of the most enjoyable sights I have ever had the opportunity to see…

Then a quick lunch at Subway at the entrance (yeah… Subway…) and then the bus ride back… Instead of going to the shopping tour in the afternoon, about half of us decided to go back to the hotel, clean up and rest before dinner tonight… And we will be shopping at least one more time this week…

So now off to dinner… Peking Duck…