We were up bright and early today as I had a taxi booked for 9am to take us to Mutianyu, north of Beijing where the Great Wall is. I haven’t been to this part before so it was a new experience for both of us. It took an hour to get there and luckily the pollution wasn’t too bad (it definitely cleared up the further away from the city we got, but was still quite misty/ smoggy).
When we arrived it was a steep trek up part of the mountain to the ticket office (luckily there were market stalls along the way to keep us interested) and then a bit of a walk again to the cable cars (there was the option to walk up or get a cable car, but the walk to the ticket office alone had left us breathless so we opted for the cable car). It had taken us 30 minutes to walk this far but we had finally made it to the observation deck next to the great wall. I was feeling a bit breathless so sat down (unfortunately my zombie costume of wearing a sheet over a t-shirt wasn’t such a bright idea as today I woke up with a full on cold and sore throat, making it a bit more difficult to breathe properly) now Matt say’s that he had only turned his back for a minute when I was swarmed by a Chinese family, each wanting photos with me! We then started the climb along the Great wall and the view was amazing (although if it had been a clearer day and the winding wall wasn’t hidden by smog I am sure it would have been breathtaking). We got a few good photos (I got asked for a few more with Chinese people) and we even managed to get a few of the two of us.
It took us 2 hours to walk through 9 watchtowers and then we reached a part where you could either take a ski lift down, or there was a toboggan run that you could go down on a kind of sled (guess which we opted for!) the sled looked far more fun so we jumped on and it was a quick ride down to the bottom where the market stalls were. I put my haggling skills to good use and bought a few souvenirs and then it was back to the taxi that was waiting for us to take us into the city.
It took us 90 minutes to get into the centre of Beijing and we went to the tapas restaurant I had been raving about for a much needed lunch. The food didn’t disappoint and there was a good atmosphere, probably the busiest that I have seen it. After lunch we were just on the main street when we bumped into three of the teachers from school, Matt’s reaction summed it up with “there are billions of people in Beijing and you probably know 30 of them, what are the chances we would bump into them?”. We then went to the Yao Show market to get Matt a “man bag” for his stay where we bumped into someone else I knew that is also on the TTC internship.
We then got the subway back to Houshayu (a dry run for Matt who is going to have to navigate it on his own on Monday, although I have made him a present to help with that) it took roughly an hour and we bumped into two more teachers that are from my school (I never bump into anyone then it’s 6 in one day!) and then a taxi back to my apartment. We had only been home 30 minutes when I realised it was 6.30pm and the Manchester United match kicked off at 7pm so it was back out to get a taxi to the Green Cap, an Irish bar that has all of the sports games on and I had found out were playing the United game that night (so Matt being the big United fan that he is, insisted that we went). We stayed for the football and ordered some food when a few of the teachers from the school arrived, it was one of the teachers birthdays and they were all coming the Green Cap to celebrate. We had a few drinks but by the time the football was over we were both quite tired so we called it a night and took a taxi back to my apartment.
For more pics click here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/69851917@N06/sets/72157628134763946/
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