The Windy Great Wall

4/17/11

Another nice touring day in Beijing!  We woke up early again this morning, warmed our butts on the toilet seat and got ready to climb the Great Wall.  We met our guide in the lobby and got into the van for about an hour drive.  However, we didn’t go directly to the Great Wall, we made a pit stop at a Jade factory and learned all about Jadeite and other similar stones.  Really quite interesting and then we had to look at some Jade and figure out what we wanted. 

 

After an hour of choosing things, we were exhausted already… shopping is definitely my least favorite thing to do.  We then drove a bit further and arrived at the section of the Great Wall that we would be climbing.  It was very neat actually, though the crowds were unbelievable.  Our guide wanted us to go up one side of the wall that looked really, really crowded and when we looked across the valley there was another section that looked much emptier, but in the end we climbed the more crowded section because our guide said it had better views.  We climbed up for about 1.5 hours until we almost reached the highest point of the section we were climbing and then decided to turn around as it looked like a storm was coming in… sure enough as we reached the bottom, it was super windy (it was very windy for the whole hike) and it had started to rain.

The steps were very large in some areas, but the whole wall and the history of the wall was interesting.  We all decided that when the rest of the family comes back with us to China, we will definitely climb the wall again.  We did buy some touristy t-shirt’s that say, “I climbed the Great wall.”  (The 'w' is lowercase on the shirts, so I wrote it how it looks!)

We got back into our van at the base and went to a Cloisonne factory to see how it was made- I had no idea it started from Copper.  We quickly walked through the process and the area of where you buy things and were taken to a spot to have some lunch.  It was okay.  

Next on the list was the Ming Tombs, which were about 20 minutes from where we just were.  The Ming Tomb area was very nice- not very crowded and very pretty.  Spring time here is beautiful because everything around us is green and in the spring all the trees blossom to beautiful pink, white and magenta colors.  We were only allowed to sort of see one tomb- on top of a large mound of dirt and they had a museum with the information about the whole area that once was.  As visitors we were not allowed to see most of the area, but the parts we could see were very nice.

 

The bathrooms at most of these tourist areas now have a choice of a regular toilet versus a hole in the ground.  Mom and I are so used to the hole in the ground by now, that at all of the bathrooms around here, we chose the hole instead because it is actually easier. At one of the places today, the holes were all taken, so we had to go to the regular toilet and it wasn’t nearly as easy anymore!  There were also many Americans in one of the bathrooms we were in and none of them wanted to go in the holes- they were all waiting for the toilets.  Silly Americans.

And that concluded our long day… though a long drive home- over an hour- because of rush hour and accidents (as no one knows how to drive here, though it is a little bit better in Beijing than the rest of the country).  Again this evening we had some bread and cheese and some of the food we brought with us that we hadn’t finished yet and didn’t want to bring back home.  It is very sad that tonight is our last night.  However, I think we are ready to come home.  And we definitely need a vacation from this vacation!