Beijing, Day 2

We had another great day in China today! We started by chatting with the kids again, getting ready, eating breakfast, and meeting the guide at 8:30. We drove about an hour and half to the Great Wall of China! We were so excited to be there!

Some merchants at the bottom of the wall. Everything was "one dollar" until you actually tried to buy it, then the prices went up substantially ;)

We started by riding a chair lift up the mountain. That's my idea of a good way to get up the mountain!

 Once you're up the mountain, the Great Wall is a long, seemingly never ending path. It is on top of a mountain, so it is very steep. There are lots of stairs and tons of hiking involved.


Our first watch tower!

 It's so fun as you start hiking to look around and see the wall wrap around the mountain as far as the eye can see!



A view from inside the watch tower. So beautiful!

Another view from the opposite side of the wall.

It's said that the wall is over 13,000 miles! That's crazy to think about! Especially when you consider how steep it is and that every aspect of the wall was built by hand. It's hard to fathom!


 This is another view from the wall. I thought this valley was so beautiful! Every season is supposedly lovely on the wall, but this in-between winter and spring left everything a bit drab. It is still a great time to visit, though, because the crowds are at a minimum, yet the weather was beautiful! Our guide showed us pictures from different seasons and I could not believe the amount of people on the wall! We really lucked out to get such a sunny day with blue skies and no smog!

My favorite part of our wall visit was to look miles ahead in the distance and watch the wall wrap around the mountain!

Our amazing guide, Sheila!

 We have loved our guide SO much these past few days! She is so knowledgeable and informative. She is also sweet and always willing to talk about whatever we have questions about. We have learned SO much about Chinese culture from hours of us asking questions and her answering! We're so grateful to have met her! Our conversations have covered politics, education, food, entertainment, marriage, money, and so much about the Chinese way of life! She asks us lots of questions about America, too. My favorite conversation today was about schooling. When in jr. high and high school, the kids go from 6:20 am to 10:30 pm Monday through Friday, then a half day on Saturday and Sunday!!! Holy cow!! I seriously can't even imagine! And because the high school is so far away, kids end up renting apartments to live near the school since the school hours are so long! That's fascinating to me!

After we finished on the wall and were completely exhausted from walking up and down stairs for an hour or so, we had a few choices on how to get down. We could hike down the mountain, take the chairlift down, or take a toboggan down. Seemed like a really easy choice to us! Toboggan all the way! It was so much fun!

Once we were safely down from the wall, we drove to a restaurant and had the most delicious Chinese food! We had broccoli, eggplant, chestnut chicken, and sweet and sour fried rice. Eggplant and chestnuts are both grown in the area. It was so, so good!
We then headed another hour or so car ride to get to the Ming tombs. There are 13 tombs near each other that hold the bodies of the emperors from the Ming Dynasty. They have only excavated one of them, however. It's very interesting to me. They are leaving the others to excavate for future generations! I think that's so awesome! The tomb that's been excavated is the "Ding Tomb"

This is the original entrance to a tomb, but it's been closed off. You enter a different way.

I thought this sign was so funny! I didn't understand. Apparently it's common knowledge in China that you shouldn't use your cell phone during a thunder storm because you will get hit by lightning. Huh?? Our guide thinks it's bizarre that we haven't heard of this!

 The tomb was very interesting, but had many, many stairs. After the Great Wall and the tomb, my legs were jello! The best part of the tomb to me was how peaceful it was! It is quite a ways out in the country and has many trees around. It was so quiet and calm compared to the hustle and bustle of downtown!
I very much enjoy that they have ratings on many bathrooms. This one was only a three star. I think that was being generous ;) Two stars was more like it.

 After the tomb, we went to the Sacred Way. This is where all the emperors bodies were carried on their way to their tombs. This path was also very peaceful and beautiful. All the statues are original! They are carved out of marble and were quite magnificent!

 They are all so massive and I can't believe how well they've held up given that they were constructed in the early 1400's!



After we finished at the tombs and took the hour + car ride back to Beijing, it was nearly time for our acrobat show to begin. We were a little bit early, so our driver took us to Starbucks to kill a few minutes. The traffic in this particular area is CrAzY! Our guide told us to exit on my side, as my side was near the sidewalk. I opened my door and the unthinkable happened!!!! A GUY ON HIS SCOOTER RAN INTO THE OPENED CAR DOOR AND FLEW OFF HIS SCOOTER!! I was seriously in shock, as was he! Our guide and driver jumped out of the car and helped him up. He had hurt his hand and was quite frazzled, but was otherwise okay. There was also no damage done to the car. The guide and driver kept reassuring me that it was not my fault, he should have slowed down and been paying attention as he was driving in a loading zone. I felt and still feel so, so awful about it, though!! I was shaking all over and so upset! I can't believe that happened! Poor guy :(

 

Once inside Starbucks, I obviously didn't want to order anything. What I wanted to do was crawl inside a hole and hide! I went to find a bathroom, though. I have been very, very careful to avoid the feared "squatty potty". Many public restrooms in China are just basically a hole in the ground you have to squat over to do your business. If you've ever been camping with me, you know I'm lousy at squatting! I was bound and determined I wouldn't have to use a squatty potty while in China! Well, the last place I expected to be forced to use one was in the Starbucks after I'd just hit a guy on his scooter! Even the three star Ming Tombs bathroom had one real toilet (even if there was no toilet paper)! I didn't really have an option, though, so I tried my best! Luckily I was successful and can boast I've conquered the squat!

 

When it was time, we made our way across the busiest street I've ever crossed. I'm so glad our guide was still with us to help us along the way! That's some seriously scary business, folks! We ended up  having great seats at the acrobat show and it was a blast!! I loved every minute of it! I took a few pictures, though there were many amazing things I didn't catch!



 This insanely flexible girl kept stacking chairs higher and higher and would bend and contort her body and hold herself up like I could not believe!

 I think my favorite part of the show were these girls on bikes. They did some amazing things! This picture is of I think 8 on the bike. At one point they had 12 people on one single bike!!

 Seriously, how on earth do they do this!?

There is another part in the show where there were 8 guys on motorcycles in a cage ball going full speed and circling around each other! I had to close my eyes it made me so nervous!!

 

After such a busy, hectic day, we were once again SO grateful for the Executive Lounge and the ability to go grab a bite to eat without having to leave the hotel! We are beat! Tomorrow's our last day in Beijing, which is very bittersweet. It's sad because we're loving it here, but it's happy because that means we are SO CLOSE to gotcha day! Goodnight for now!