Great Wall!

Hi! Already a new update. We're still in Beijing but we slightly changed plans; we're going to inner mongolia tonight! We're not sure how many internet cafe's we'll find there, so we thought we'd better write something now... I'll try to keep it a bit shorter this time ;)

Monday we didn't do much, as the internet cafe took quite some of our time ;) We just went to a hutong with some little shops and then we had the famous Peking Duck; was really good!

Great Wall & Ming Tombs
Tuesday we had did a trip from a little travel agency that came to me when I was sitting on the square behind the temple of heaven the first day. The trip went (according to the card) to the Great Wall, the Ming Tombs and the Olympic Stadium. But the trip was quite cheap, so offcourse half of the day was occupied by commercial things. But they were actually quite intesting; we went to a jade factory and they showed us how they make the sculptures and juwelry, then to a place where they make the very colourfull vases, I forgot the name (not porselain). A silk factory and a big (state organised) tea house (where we had really good tea!). For the Great Wall we went to Juyongguan, which is the closest to Beijing and probably one of the more touristic ones, but I liked the view from the wall on Beijing. We climbed all the way to the top of the mountain; one hour of really unequal steps (my legs still hurt...), but it was great and the view was magnificient! For the Ming Tombs, the tombs of 13 of the 16 Ming emperors, we actually went to the smaller one (Zhao Ling). We kind of rushed through it (I think because we got back from the wall half an hour too late), but our guide knew to tell quite a lot about it, so it was nice. The people in our tour were also really nice, and we were just 6 (including us), so that was cool! Oh the Olympic Stadium was kind of cancelled somehow, we just drove past it, and we stoped for a moment to take pictures, haha, Chinese way ;) After this we were kind of dead, so we just went to our hotel and finally made a plan for our trip; we are really satisfied with our plan :)

Shortly summarized we decided to go to the place Hohhot now (Inner Mongolia), and try to find a tour into the grasslands.Then we'll go to Datong and after Luoyang (to see some ancient caves and make a stop at different provinces ;) Then to Chendu in Sichuan province to maybe see some panda's and probably burn our tongues a couple of times on the food. Then Chongqing to take a cruise over the Jangzi river. If possible we want to go all the way to Wuhan. And then probably Dian will have not too much time left so we'll head off for Shanghai. Well, that's the plan now, let's see what it becomes ;)

Hm, I believe we have to go now, not to miss our train to Hohhot... So this for now, I actually kept it short, lol. The update of the other days and photo's will follow (again...). Maybe from Hohhot, we'll see.

Oh, almost forgot the most important thing! We bought a wrong simcard; we couldn't call abroad with it. So now we bought another one, with a little phone, so I'm also still reachable on my French no. The Chinese no is now 0086-13439887448. The other one we won't really use anymore. So you can reach me on this number or my french one. Really going now, ciao ciao!

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