Great Wall of China: October 12, 2010

One of the clearest days on our trip happened at the right day! The day we visited the Great Wall of China! How the heck did we get here? Here again is a funny story of how we ended up in a bootleg tour that was sold to us by a man we ran into at the Forbidden City. I think its a funny story just cause we always had plan to do the sites on our own terms. But this tour was so good we couldn’t pass it up. The Cost merely $15 per person. The tour was SUPPOSE to include: The big hitters of The Great Wall, Ming Tombs, Olympic Stadiums. What we really got was Jade Factory, The Great Wall, Authentic Chinese lunch, Satin Factory, Tea Tasting, Olympic Training Facility. Let me talk about tours. If you ever go on these tours why the heck are they so cheap? Well its because of the added fluff they put you through. First off before heading to The Great wall we had to make a stop to this “Jade Factory”. It really was a store that sells jade and has some small museum on the history of jade. I’m thinking the tour gets a kickback from people who buy there. They didn’t not get anything from us!!! After the factory and a nap. We reached the Great Wall! Not the typical Badling section. We had the option of hiking up to the wall or taking this ski lift up. Ski lifts?!? Yep think Tahoe ski lifts back in the day. The tickets to the lift came with a return tobbagan slide down. I’ll get back to that later. So these ski lifts… They were scary… Open with just the lap bar to enclose you. We finally reach the Great Wall. The we roamed around and who knew the wall had steps, not typical 7-11 steps these were tall steps. They were steps then flat portions and steps and flat portions, etc… Then more steps to get to the towers along the wall. And that’s pretty much it. Well besides it being the Great Wall. Now for the toboggan. We could hike down or use our return ticket via toboggan run. Heck yah toboggan!

Are we in Tahoe? Nope… Far from

Tom enjoying the ride not having to hike to the Wall.

View of the ski lifts

Beijing graced us with one of the clearest and sunniest days we could have asked for.

And there she goes… on and on and on

The huge steps. not the typical 7-11 rise.

Tuktuk enjoying his view of the GWC.

This is where i scared the crap out of Tom as i ungracefully scaled the wall to get up here.

Just chilling at the GWC

Mandatory couple photo!

After wandering a bit at the GWC we decided it was time to take the toboggans down the hill!  They were single seaters.  that were basically a little vessel that slide down a giant metal slide.  did i mention it was a hot day?  so we didn’t even think about touching the slide with out skin.

At the bottom of the GWC there were usual food and tourist souvenir vendors.

Great day to be at the wall!

Let’s talk about this photo below. Remember that story about the jade factory. Same goes here… So we thought we were headed to the Olympic villages-technically we were there.  But we only saw the training facility.  This is here all the tourist got corralled in a  room with seats and these children prob 14-18 brought out buckets and poured hot water and tea.   The went on to massage everyone feet.  Weird eh?   but shortly after there was a “doctor” that came around and did some reflexology and read our ailments.  WTH? why?  So they can sell some crazy ointment stuff. My ailments were back ache and exhaustion.  Umm of course we are tourist .   We didn’t get any cause wth we aren’t fools.  we kindly said no thanks and went to the van and went on our way.Thanks for the foot massage though.

P.S. We didn’t get to see the Ming Tombs… this is what we get for such a cheap cheap tour… Lessons Learned!