Great Wall finally!

06.11.2015

Dave and I arrived in Beijing early Saturday morning. I felt reasonably well rested, because this time, I had a nice sleep on a bunk bed. It made a huge difference.

We went straight for breakfast and our hostel, except we walked right by it and ended up really far away. Breakfast was good, there were a lot of different pickled things for my noodles, which I was impressed by.

Eventually, we found our hostel and dropped our bags off in the storage closet. We took the bus out to Mutianyu and two other foreigners were also on the same bus as us. They agreed to take a taxi with us to the wall after we got to the bus stop.

I was sleepy though, so I read the wrong thing in the guide book and we ended up getting into a taxi that was too expensive. The other two took a cable car to the top, but the hill wasn't much higher than the one in Jiaozuo, so we climbed to the top and left them behind.

It ended up being really easy, so we had enough energy to climb from end to end of this part of the wall. The newfallen snow made the craggy mountains glisten and highlighted the crevices in white. The steps were slippery with a thin layer of ice and the wind was often quite chilly. We noticed there were hardly any Chinese people out there that day. They were probably all hiding from the cold. Maybe they were the smart ones. It ended up being a nice day anyway.

When we finally came down, we were starving, but could only see two restaurants. One was Chinese and way too busy, the other was Western and really expensive. We had no choice but to eat there. Fish and chips for $10, scandalous! The salad was great though. I couldn't remember the last time I had one, it was kind of awesome.

We took the shuttle down the hill, but it was a bad idea, because it was only about five minutes long. Then, there were a bunch of taxi drivers harassing us and Dave found out there was a way to take the bus back to Beijing. I really didn't want another stupid taxi, especially not another one harassing me. I just sat down at the bus stop and refused to get up. Finally, the bus came and we made it back to town. I fell right asleep and Dave woke me up to eat some duck. It was great, best duck ever. My Beijing experience is now complete.

Picklessssss