Summer Palace and the Great Wall of China

The last two days here in China has been very exciting with one day venturing out to the Summer Palace and yesturday was our Great Wall day trip. To get to the Summer Palace we decided to take the city bus. Which the girls working at the hostel said it was easy. Ya, it's easy when you can read which stop you are suppose to get off. Getting there was slightly confusing but being only lost once in Beijing for the week is not to bad. We were suppose to take our first bus to the terminal stop close to the zoo but (we think one stop to soon) the bus driver started kicking everyone of the bus. After walking for a bit we found a information both that told us where to go. So we finally found our second bus stop and 2 hours later eventually made our way to the Summer Palace. Taking the bus was an excellent way to see the city. Again the Summer Palace Park was huge with quite a large lake in the middle of it. The Summer Palace had some very cool bridges that you would take as you walk around the lake venturing into different Temples. The main temple was on top this very large hill but had a neat large budda in it. There was another temple beside it that had a different kind of budda in it, holding 3 heads on top of its own, each with 3 faces, 24 arms and stood on top of 999 lotus leaves. The buddas are very cool to see with so much detail and decoration on and around them. The park was huge and we were too cheap to buy the map so we got a little lost but it was cool venturing around the area. The park was gorgeous with different lakes and ponds and beautiful big trees. The Empress would come here lots as a lot of temple sitting areas were about her. You could imagine how she would walk around the lake. We stayed there until the park was closing and then we decided to take the subway home. But as we were coming out of the park there was this long street full of people and vendors selling odd food on these cooking stations that were somehow connected to their bike. They were selling items like corn (which you find people selling almost on every corner), weiners on a stick, weiners wrapped up in an egg pancake, yams that are lightly cooked on this barrel (which you can smell a block away) and other odd pocket filled things. We didn't eat anything but it sure was funny seeing people rip up and down the street with their bike with the food still cooking in the side. It was a cool day really being able to see Beijing.
The next day we got up at 6 am and went on a 3 hour bus ride to the Great Wall. This was sooooo cool. The bus dropped us off at one section of the wall (Jinshanling) where we took a cable car up to the wall then we walked 8 km (5 hours) along the wall to this other section (Simatai) where we got off and meet the bus at the hotel at the bottom. The wall is super amazing that just stretches along the hillside for as long as you can see. On one side you are looking at China on the other is Mongolia. Which these two little Mongolian women followed us a good up hill section of the wall telling us things and then trying to sell us souveniours. The whole day seemed so surreal as it was just such a cool feeling to be touching the great wall. The walk was actually really strenuous with lots of really steep steps, (if there were steps at all!) going up and down. This section of the wall has not been re-done (like some other sections) which made it very authentic and neat. But that also meant that the stairs were not really exsiting anymore. The walk was very cool however, and the scenary was breathtaking. The drive to and from was also cool with seeing some neat farming communities including herding cows on the street. That evening we made our way to the popular food market Wanfuji dajie. This place was cool with live scorpions on a stick, sea horses, lizards and starfish on a stick and odd other meats on a stick. We tried one meatstick that tasted pretty good. We had some other yummy food items like dumplings and well not really sure what the other stuff was but we didn't get sick. It was a perfect way to end our real Chinese experience. Today we don't have much planned except for an acrobatic show tonight and tommorow we already fly to Thailand. The week went by fast but we got to see lots. We uploaded pictures to our previous blog so go check those out if you would like to see them. Next time we write will be in Thailand.
Monica and Curtis

---

---