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Published: March 12th 2007
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Our first glimpse of the Wall
There is an expressway to get you here from Beijing in about 40 minutes. Well, now we’ve been to The Great Wall and lived to tell about it. The first day we walked down from the hotel(about 3/4 of a mile), but decided we would wait until Saturday to actually climb it. In Badoling, the wall has been rebuilt for people to be able to walk on it. It is hard to imagine that they have 4500 miles of it. We could see some of it that had not been restored and it was quite overgrown and a lot of broken stones.
Our hotel called “the Commune” was wonderful and tempted us into breaking a promise we had made to eat only Chinese food while we were here. One look at the western menu with New Zealand rack of Lamb and New Zealand Anchor butter and we forgot all about the Chinese menu. It was wonderful, their mashed potatoes were quite sweet, but nice.
The next morning, we arranged to have a car take us down and pick us up in two hours. We also made appointments to have 90 minutes massages at 4:00 that afternoon. It was very cold on Saturday in the mountains. So, at 28 degrees F and a really cold wind,
Our room at the Commune
There are 3 bedrooms with bath which is your room and then you share the rest of the house. No one else there, so the whole place was ours. It was snowing, you can see me waving inside. we paid our fees of about $6.00 each and started climbing. It was all stone and some risers were as little as 6 inches and some were as large as 24 or more inches. The higher we got, the steeper, so it was almost like climbing a ladder without the side rails to hang onto. We kept stopping and sitting down on the steps and pretending we were looking at the scenery. It took us an hour to get to the 2nd watch tower and we were so happy that they did not let you go any further. I think more thankful than happy. We went down backwards most of the way, but it was much easier than going up. Chairman Mao said that you were not a true man unless you had walked the Great Wall, so I guess Jim & I are true men. I hope I get over it soon.
Then, after we got back and rested a little, we went to have our massages. Now, Jim has always pooh-poohed the idea of him and massage, but after two here in China, he is a convert. These were whole body Chinese Traditional massages. We were in the
Starting up the Wall
We honestly didn't think we could make it to top when we started. same room and it was a restful time. We weren’t very sore the next day at all, so they must have helped.
Our ride back to town picked us up Sunday morning and we stopped at two historic sites on the way. One, called “The Spirit Way” was a long walkway that had been the entrance to the tombs of many emperors from the 1400’s to the 1700’s. One of the tombs, called Dingling, has been excavated and you can go down and through it. It was about 80 feet underground and quite amazing when you think how long ago it was built. Some of the items inside were replicas, but the scope of it was amazing.
We got back to the Beijing Hotel very slowly because Sunday is the worst day to try to do anything, since everybody else is doing it too. It made us long for the rush hour traffic in Chicago. Even the streets were very crowded when we went out later for Peking Duck. They eat it a little like moo-shoo pork with the little wonton wrappers. The professional duck slicer comes to your table and slices it right in front of you. We had
Saying "I think I can"
It was cold, but after a while, you hardly noticed 1/2 a duck and it was just right. We may be headed there again tonight. We had planned to do The Forbidden City, but left it until tomorrow and are trying to catch up on other things a little. Will continue with the Forbidden City tomorrow.
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