Advertisement
Published: August 11th 2011
Edit Blog Post
Today was our second day on the Great Wall, and we are thankful we made the decision to do our extra day on the wall at the weekend. Considering what a full day we felt we would have, we were still only leaving the hostel at 11am which seemed madness. We had lunch on route to the Wall at some obscure, extremely touristy place where the food, albeit Chinese, seemed incredibly Western. It was also selling cooper wired pottery for an obscene amount of money as well as the other typical touristy gimicks. Once we had left here it was still around another hour to the Great Wall, and the weather was not looking particularly good. It was still extremely hazy, and we knew the visibility on the Wall would not be good.
Once we finally did hit the wall you could tell people were disappointed. The place was heaving with tourists, you could not move for people. Our tour guide sorted us out with tickets and then we were free to wander the wall for two hours. Two hours! That is all they gave us to walk the Great Wall of China, one of the biggest highlights of the
trip. CJ, Emily, Lizzie and I were so pleased we had the chance to hike the wall properly on Sunday, as this section of the wall that we visited (called Badaling) was notourious for the crowds and the lack of real hiking ability. Don't get me wrong, the wall is still stunning and you do still get to see all of its former glory, however as it is restored it does not feel as 'real' as some other sections of the wall elsewhere. Also, it is still pretty steep and we were covered in sweat by the time we had hiked as far as we could (there were gates preventing us from getting any further than about 1.5km). Luckily for us, the tour guide reccommended that we go right on the wall, however we wisely ignored this, turned right and moved right away from the crowds and actually got a long stretch of the wall to ourselves for a while. Whilst on the highest section of the wall the weather began to turn and we decided to head back as the wind really picked up and it went from a balmy, muggy afternoon to very fresh and grey clouds began to roll in. With the wind picking up some of the hazy actually left the mountains and we were left with breathtaking views of the wall and the surrounding countryside which was amazing.
We left the Great Wall behind and headed back to Beijing, only to be greeted by a huge thunderstorm and a typical three hour traffic jam into the city. Honestly, we moan about the M25, I'll never complain again after seeing what they put up with over here! It is like the M25 on a bad day, in rush hour, with four accidents, but constantly like that. Its awful. We finally made it to the restaurant in town and we tucked into what was probably the best meal so far, with traditional Beijing dishes that were extremely good. Due to the rain we stayed in the hostel for the evening, although by the time we eventually made it back it was pretty late. We played some cards and chilled out for a while before hitting the sack ready for tomorrow's 'early' 9am start.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.09s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 7; qc: 45; dbt: 0.0625s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb