We woke up to the start of another beautiful day and got dressed and ready packing what we needed for the day. Once we were ready we headed down to the lobby to buy water and to meet up with the rest of our group. The Great wall is the one thing on our trip to Beijing all 8 of us did together. After waiting for a few minutes our tour guide showed up to meet us at our hostel. We waited for a few minutes for our van then got in and paid our guide for our tour. As we did so our driver headed for our great wall tour starting point. While we drove out there which was about a 3 hour drive our tour guide asked us what we knew about the great wall and told us some interesting tidbits and information about it. At one point along the way we stopped and were given the opportunity to go to the restroom. The bathroom that we stopped at is probably the most disgusting restroom I’ve ever been in, in my entire life and I hope never to encounter on that bad again. Once we were given that opportunity we headed back into the van, while we continued our drive our tour guide handed out our lunches to pack away for later when we were on the wall. After a bit longer we reached our starting point and headed out of the van. Our starting point was in someone’s backyard in a small Chinese village, from here we started up the hill towards the wall. It wasn’t an easy hike but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. We worked our way up and about an hour or so later we made it to our starting point, one of the old watch towers from the non-restored section of the wall. We spent a few minutes there exploring and resting and then we went along our way again, hiking the wall.
The non-restored section of the wall was somewhat crumbling with various plants growing through the middle of it. We hiked along trying to avoid the cracked segments and dodging around trees and bushes. While we were along this section of the wall, our tour guide, lee, let us know how they held the wall together. The Chinese used rice as a kind of mortar. They baked the heck out of rice, mixed it with water, ash, and various other minerals and used that as a mortar to hold together the wall. This information was something that I found rather interesting. We hiked along the non-restored section for awhile longer going through a couple of watchtowers then eventually at one of the watchtowers we stopped. People spent a little bit of time eating and we took a bunch of pictures, including some group jumping pictures. After a little while we continued onward. We took a shortcut for awhile that wasn’t on the wall as our tour guide let us know that the portion of the wall directly in front of us was too dangerous and would take too long to hike. After we’d been off the wall for a little while we found our way back onto the wall and continued on. Not long after we had returned to the wall we came to the crossroads, where the non-restored section of the great wall met the restored section. So of we went onto the restored section of the wall. We came across our first tower of the restored section and spent some time taking pictures, while the first vendor we came across tried to get our attention, however, Lee, our tour guide helped us to avoid the vendor and off we went.
We continued along the wall, on and on. We made our way through several watch towers, past several vendors, and up and down tons and tons of steps. Hiking along the wall was quite something. All of the steps along the wall varied, some were very steep, while others were very shallow, along all of them we went as we continued along. As we headed along the wall we made various stops to take pictures and take in all of the scenery. Enjoying the fall colors and looking from side to side at China on the one side, with Mongolia on the other. We continued along and reveled in one of the seven manmade wonders of the world. We continued along down the wall making it through several watch towers, on we went. After awhile we came across an area of the wall with a few signs and some information where we stopped, read, and took some pictures before we moved on. We continued on through the watch towers, eventually hitting the last watch tower we would go through. We all opted to pay the little bit of extra money and we took the toboggan slides down off of the wall. We took toboggans on wheels and steered our way down the wall, it was a ton of fun and we all made it safely to the bottom. Once at the bottom there were many a vendor. I stopped at one and bartered them down to 20 Yuan for a print of the great wall, they’ll try to tell you it’s painted, never believe them. I knew it wasn’t real, but I wanted my souvenir from the great wall and I figure roughly $3 is a small price to pay. Afterward we found our way out and as most of us had something else planned for the evening rather than spending time walking around the town we had Lee take us back for our tour van and we began the 3 hour drive home.
Once we got home we went up to our hostel rooms for a moment and put away those things that we wouldn’t need for the evening. Then we met down in the lobby to wait for our car to the opera. Six of us went and it was something that was offered by our hostel so we also paid for transport there. We headed to the Opera after dropping off some others to go see the acrobats. Once we got there our driver got out, walked us in, and purchased our tickets. After we had our tickets we went in. After we had found our seats and when we knew when the show started we made a detour down to the souvenir shop and looked around for a bit. Once we were done looking we made our way back to our seats and just talked until the show started. The show was at a Peking opera themed hotel and rather than have a single opera they did 4 scenes from various operas. It wasn’t as entertaining or interesting as it could have been but it gave us a glimpse of a different culture. They also had a couple of displays up above on either side of the stage which translated the Chinese so that you could read what was being said. We made it through the opera, with most of us finding one scene to be the most interesting and entertaining. Once it was over we decided to walk back to our hostel as it wasn’t far. So we headed back, talking, various conversations of interest going on along the way. We made it back to the hostel and we called it a night, giving us some time to sleep before the next day.
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