Me on the Great Wall

Tuesday, April 27

On my last full day in Beijing, I visited the Great Wall via sidecar!

That's the second car, which they always take in case something happens to one of them. I must say I felt safer in the sidecar than I did in the taxis in Beijing!

The first stop was to see the Silver Pagodas, of which there were 7. Of the 7, 5 of them date back to a dynasty almost 1000 years ago!

From the entrance. 5 of them are the size you see here and the last 2 are smaller, indicating their younger age.

Incense offerings, which sadly were joined by a few cigarette butts.

I wasn't really sure what these were at first, I thought maybe there was some big event or something. However on closer inspection I saw there was writing on them:

And my tour guide told me they were Tibetan prayer flags.

My tour guide was a guy from Romania who's lived in Beijing about a year and a half. While walking around the pagoda area we had some coffee and chatted for a bit. He purchased some delicious dried fruits from one of the old ladies who had a stand set up outside the pagoda entrance and then we were on our way again.

Sharing the road with sheep.

My first glimpse of the Wall! I can't begin to explain how exciting this experience was for me. I decided as an elementary student that one of the things I had to see before I died was the Great Wall so it was pretty much an indescribably feeling for me!

We arrived at the little house where the guys park their bikes and had a beer together before starting on the hike up to the wall. The ride was quite chilly so I was bundled up pretty good. The other driver, a Chinese man, cut a stick for me to take as a walking stick and it actually came in handy in a couple of spots.

At the beginning of the hike, which I later found out is quite difficult. I think my excitement pushed me through it though!

There's the Wall, we were parked down below it so we had to hike up to it.

We made it, my first shot actually ON the Wall!

It was drizzling a little as we hiked up and after we got to the Wall it actually snowed for about a minute! You can see it on my hat and scarf. Luckily it didn't last long!

I believe this is after climbing the first section of the Wall after we got to it. All together the Great Wall, including all sections and branches is just over 5000 miles long! The part we visited was called "Huanghua" which means yellow flower in Chinese. You can go here to read about the section of the Wall and it's history, which is pretty interesting! This is not to closest section of the Wall to Beijing which meant fewer tourists. I actually only saw 2 other people while on the Wall!

So we hiked up a bit and then Andy, the tour guide, told me we'd made it to the spot where we eat lunch! The tour company provides a picnic lunch:

Complete with a bottle of wine:

of which Andy drank about half a glass and I drank the rest!
Lunch was delicious! We had some pork sandwiches on baguettes and some really great cherry tomatoes. We sat and ate and talked for a bit. He was an interesting guy!

This was the view from our lunch area.
After lunch we cleaned up and got on our way again. Apparently we'd made really good time due to little traffic on the way so we got to hang out at lunch for quite a while. Then we started hiking toward our stopping point where the other driver was waiting with a bike to take us back to Andy's bike at the beginning.

Apparently this is the tour company's picture taking spot. He told me they make all their customers take a photo here. The company by the way, if anyone happens to be going to Beijing and would be interested, is called Beijing Sideways and I would highly recommend them!

As you can see here, after the snow we had beautiful blue skies!

Chillin' on the Wall =)

This is after we actually exited the Wall. There were beautiful cherry blossoms all around which I loved because they'd already come and gone here in Japan.

 After our climb we stopped at another little spot the tours always use and had a celebratory beer! I figured I deserved it.

After a little bit of relaxing we walked down to the other driver and all 3 of us rode in his side car back to the beginning to get the other car and they took me back to Christy's place.
All in all it was such an amazing day! I had a great trip to China overall, but this day took the cake for sure. I actually felt my eyes well up with tears as we were leaving the Wall area. I kept turning my head, craning my neck to catch one last peek of it. Like I said, I decided in elementary school that I had to see the Great Wall and now 20 years later I was actually doing it. That's a pretty powerful feeling!

The next morning I flew back to Japan and so this concludes my trip to China. Now I have to try to find something else to blog about...