The Great Wall of China, Mk III - Marc goes Traveling

The Great Wall of China, Mk III

2007-10-16

Not only is my friend Zoltan in town visiting from Seattle, but Alex's dad is in town for a few days with his girlfriend. So, the whole gang of us decided to go to the Great Wall of China. I had previously been there twice, once to the Simatai Great Wall in early 2006 and once later that year with my sister to the Badaling Great Wall.

This time, it was the Mutianyu site. It's farther than Badaling, but not as far as Simatai. It's not as run-down as Simatai, but not as fake-seeming as Badaling. In short, it's the baby bear of Great Walls, and definitely my favourite of the three. The weather was unbelievably fantastic today, with perfect temperatures, excellent visibility, and blue skies ruled the day.

We walked up to the wall, strolled around for an hour or two, and then took a toboggan sled ride down the mountain. I was skeptical about the sled ride, but it ended up being a massive blast. Highly recommended.

We finished off with some mediocre tourist-fare lunch, and then headed back into the city, courtesy of the nice transportation that Alex's dad arranged.

[Click on any photo for a larger view]

There are a good number of people here, but the crowds really aren't that oppressive. The locals are also not all that pushy or annoying with the shopping either, which is nice.	You can buy just about anything here, too.
Working our way up to the entrance to the park.	Rawr! Scary golden inflatable plastic lion is scary!
		We decided not to use the cable car, and instead walk the 30 minutes up to the top of the hills.
It's not that far, and such a lovely day for it.	Helpful signage!
There are stairs the whole way up, so it's not like you're really trekking hard through the mountains....
Alex's dad's friend Neely. She Australian, so she sounds kinda funny. I think they throw lots of shrimps on the barbies there.	Alex's dad, striking a pose.	Alex, looking dapper as ever.
This is the sled ride down. We're gonna do that, I suppose.	Helpful map!	Wanna rest? Free benches!
Protect our Environment = Protect Ourselves!		Aaaallmmoooossttt there!
	And we're on the wall finally. It's very ... uh .. wall-y.	The surrounding scenery is fantastic.
		Most unexpected graffiti ever: Pakistan great!
I love Pakistan!
The Great Wall is punctuated by these guard towers every few hundred metres, where the guards lived and ... well ... guarded things. It was probably very cold in the winter.
		There were these little bugs all over the place that just wanted to be our friends. They would just hang out on us all the time. I found three in my stuff after getting home.
	Don't forget to take lots of photos.
Uuh, great wall garbage cans?
	Awwwww!!!
	I am a tool.

	Coolest cloud formation of the day (ONLY cloud formation of the day).

	Even in the nice weather, you start to get hot after a while.


	I can't read this.


	Oh man, we hafta walk all the way back that way to where we head down the hill ...

Alex wanted to do some Great Wall Yoga.	This is the entrance to the toboggan slide thing down.	Safety instructions!
One of the cable-cars goes right over your head.	This is a video of the entire ride down. It took me about 90 seconds to figure out that I could go faster. The guys yelling at me every 100m or so are telling me "no cameras". haha.	Down at the bottom, it's back to the car.

	Great Wall toilets!!!