Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Great Wall Hike

We were very excited for our day of hiking along the Great Wall. I had done a ton of research about the different areas you could visit and we definitely wanted to avoid the most touristic one. The crowds there are supposedly wall to wall.
We drove almost two hours from Beijing to a small village at the base of the Jiankou section of the wall. We hiked about an hour straight update to the wall, which was part of the crumbling and unrestored section. The views were amazing and it was so neat to see this part of the wall.
Then we started our hike along the actual wall. Some of it was overgrown with plants and around each bend were beautiful views. It took us a few hours to reach the more touristy Mutianyu section. There were many more people here but still not as many as the more popular Badaling section. 
We had the option to take a toboggan down the wall or a cable car and we chose the toboggan. It was actually quite a long ride and really fun. We drove to another small village and had a typical lunch of several stir fry dishes, including an excellent cauliflower one. 






















We had a long ride back to our hotel in traffic. I can't believe how much traffic there is here. We decided to take the subway to dinner instead of a cab. We ate at Capital M and sat outside overlooking Tiananmen Square. It was beautiful all lit up. 



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