China - Beijing - Great Wall - Mutianyu

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We asked a few people on whether we should go to Badaling or Mutianyu. From what we gathered, if you want to go to both the Great Wall and the Ming Tombs, then it’s better to go to Badaling. However, if you are just interested in visiting the Great Wall, Mutianyu would be a better choice mainly because it’s less crowded and you can have a more relaxing walk along the Great Wall. We chose to go to Mutianyu at the end. There are also other parts of the Great Wall that people might visit, but they were too far away for us as we wanted to visit the Great Wall in the morning and the Summer Palace in the afternoon.

We hired a car with a driver for a day for RMB 600. The driver picked us up at 8.30am and we arrived at Mutianyu at around 10.30am. It was not too crowded by the time we got there. We bought a cable car return ticket to go up to the Great Wall, and the view during the cable car ride was magnificent.

We always wanted to visit the Great Wall because of the incredible amount of efforts that people from different dynasties had put into it. When we arrived at the Great Wall, what we saw really lived up to our expectations. Although most parts of Mutianyu were restored, the walk along the Great Wall was impressive. Especially when there were no cable cars to transport the rocks and bricks up the mountain back in the old days!

We spent about an hour walking along the Great Wall, then took the cable car back and had lunch. There were plenty of souvenir stores on the way back to where we had lunch – there were a number of cafes which served traditional Chinese food and a Subway.
We spent about 3 hours at Mutianyu including our lunch there.

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