Beijing

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So....Arrived in China on 25th, early morning, exhausted. Flight was comfortable with lots of films but neither of us got much sleep. Got a taxi to the hotel, all went smooth.

First impressions of Beijing: Built-up, full of glass sky-scrapers and other huge buildings. Busy. Bit mad, everyone beeps at one another to move out of the way.

First impressions of hotel: Ok, basic but clean-just what is essential! We were both knackered so hit the pit for a couple of hours.


Met the tour group that evening, had a briefing of what is included and what is optional. The tour guide is very nice and helpful. Unfortunately he told us the bad points of the tour which is the cruise... The boats have rats and cockroaches, that will be very interesting but we are not going to think about that til the time comes. He took us to a lovely local restaurant for some grub, he done the ordering and it was tasty!!

26th October.... Early rise, freezing cold, headed for the Great Wall of China on our private bus with the other 11 people. Through the wilderness of Beijing, we headed up through the mountains and eventually reached the entrance to the Wall about 2 hours later. We had 2 options, walk the whole way up or get the cable car to tower 14 and walk the rest.....hmmmmm, i guess its the cable car!! Some of the people on a very strict budget walked. Ourselves and an Australian coulple paired up and went in the cable car. It was quite surreal going up, looking over the miles and miles of mountain and looking down to the distance under us. Once we got dropped off at tower 14, we headed for the peak at tower 23. The last part was definetly the toughest, Peter counted 450-ish steps and about the last 12 were huge. I was exhausted when we reached the peak, Peter was not too bad! On the way down our legs were shaking and it was actually quite difficult to walk. We headed for Tower 6, where we met the group and got a Tobaggo downhill.. Basically they were like individual bob-sleighs, very very fun!! Took lots of pics but need to buy a download lead for my camera as I forgot it.

We are still quite tired and jet-laggged so went for a snooze on returning from the Great Wall and we met our group again to go for dinner.

We have just got back from dinner, where we had a special Beijing noodle dish with other meat and veggie dishes, I was not overly fussed but Peter enjoyed.

Tomorrow is another big day so will update this in another few days.

I may add here that Facebook is not allowed in this country so I will not be using for a few weeks.

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