What a wonderful experience! We headed to the Jinshanling section of the wall from our hotel in Beijing on 1 May, a national holiday in China and the start of a 4-day weekend. Envision Thanksgiving weekend multiplied by ten -- trucks, buses, construction, and black official cars with escorts who drove the wrong way, blocking narrow roads at will. It took us four, rather than the scheduled three, hours to get to the wall. This is a hard section to climb, beginning at Jinshanling and ending at Simatai. There are 30 towers to climb, all of which are connected by causeways and flights of steps, all made of rock. Some areas have been rebuilt, but others are just jumbled blocks, sometimes inclined at 70 degrees. Tom went along with group A, which took 4 hours to
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