Not a lot of folks here at 9.15am on a rainy Thursday.
Well, except for the people who want to sell you stuff, of course.
This is the most complicated entrance price list I have ever seen.
They have a nice little reservoir and canal system here. It's pretty cool.
We decided to take the cablecar about halfway up the mountain to save us some time and leg energy. The cars don't slow down at all for you to get in, so it's kind of an adventure on it's own.
Mariane and Patrik in the car in front of us.
Samantha bought a little raincoat for like 1$. It was kinda crappy still at this point.
There's not much to the cars you sit in, nor much protection from the rain.
The ride takes you over some extremely cool scenery, however.
First step: walking up the next part of the mountain to the actual wall. w000t.
Looking up at the umbrellas of the people waiting for their new "friends" to come up. They wait in line and pre-agree who gets whom.
This is annoying person #1.
Oooh, getting close to the wall.
The views are quite glorious up here, and on a cold winter day, it's probably amazing.
We first headed east and uuuup!
Every hundred metres or so on the wall are these watch towers. None of them are in the best of shapes, but the architecture inside of them is very cool.
Alright! Annoying person #2.
Most of them just hard large fire pits in the middle, and one presumes that guards just spent most of their time huddled around them playing cards.
Annoying Person #3 decided Patrik was the most likely to buy something from her. He's a pretty nice guy.
Looking north, you're no longer in the same province as Beijing, but instead in Hebei province.
The wall is in great shape in some places, and pretty messed up in others.
Annoying person #2 gave up and headed back first.
With the rain, the steps were a bit slippery, but we all had a grand time scrambling around.
This is as far as you're allowed to go eastwards. The wall is just too messed up further.
Looks pretty cool though.
We stopped for a bit of sugar to keep the legs energised.
You don't feel like you're making much progress, but you actually walk quite a bit.
You can walk about 4-5 hours on this whole length of the wall.
These two ladies decided going up sucked too much and stopped for a break.
You walk down to the reservoir, cross a bridge, and then go back up the wall again. It takes the legs a few days to stop being sore.
Girls!
The bridge is a big wooden-platformed cable bridge. Quite sturdy, and only mildly alarming.
Gotta fix up da hair before climbing up.
We think they farm corn here, but aren't 100% sure. Definitely no rice here.
We stopped here for a break for a while. The rain had completely stopped by now and the temperature was just perfect for being outdoors.
Next stop: food.
Mmmmm ... monstrous amounts of food for ... 15$ (120元).
And beer, of course.
yummy Tofu.
And shredded pork
And sweet and sour chicken. That didn't last long.
MY CARE AND CHERISH IS MOST AWESOME.