The Wall finally! and others

Me and a watchtower
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I joined my tour on Thursday night, first thing to do was to go out to dinner for some Beijing duck, in a great restaurant, near the hotel but in a different world - through dark deserted unpaved streets.  My tour group are all lovely people - a Kiwi couple, an Aussie couple, a Norwegian couple, a Canadian couple, two Irish girls and my roommate Eliza, Canadian.  Our tour guide is a lovely Chinese girl, English name Marcia.

The first full day was probably the reason why most of us were there - the Wall!  After breakfast of traditional chinese dumplings and porridge (which interestingly enough, only the adventurous Kiwis turned up to) we headed out on a bus to the wall.  One problem - it blew a tire halfway there, so we were stranded in the middle of the motorway for 15mins while the driver tried to fix it with cars streaming by less than a metre from him at 100ks.  I couldn't look, but couldn't not look.  Unfortunately he couldn't fix it, so we limped to the wall on the wheel rim - not much fun!

I had to keep mentally pinching myself to believe I was actually there

Wall snaking through the forests and snow
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We went to the wall at Mutianyu - 800 steps from the carpark straight up.  There is a cable car, which may have been a good option if we were allowed the choice!

It was amazing to be on the wall - I had to keep mentally pinching myself to believe I was actually there.  It looked like all the pictures - snaking away over the mountain ridges, watchtowers every few hundred metres, wide with turret like walls.  We had two hours on the wall itself, spent walking between and exploring watch towers, chatting and taking pictures.  Unfortunately the day wasn't the clearest, but the views were still lovely to the naked eye if not my camera lens!  In keeping with the traditional forms of transport up to and down from the wall (not) I took the toboggan down the mountain, a pipe like thing like a bobsled chute, which you go down on a luge.  I was the only girl to do it - but was a bit slower than the boys, who looked like they had been waiting a while by the time I made it down - it was fun though.

Watchtower at Mutianyu
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After the wall we went to see an acrobatic show - 1 hour of people doing amazing things involving contortionists, plate spinning, jumping and tumbling through hoops, balancing on sticks and each other, and balancing on bikes.  The costumes and light show was also very good, definitely recommended!

That night, after a group dinner, we had a valuable lesson in the cultural differences in attitudes towards customers.  We decided to have a couple of drinks in the hotel bar before bed, due to laziness as finding a bar close by in Beijing seemed a bit daunting as its hardly teeming with night life in our area! After sending back some of the drinks as the alcohol in them was barely discernable, if present at all, some of us were shocked to be charged for double vodka and oranges, 100 yuan each ($NZ20), a lot of money for 1 drink anywhere!  After 30 mins of arguing over what constitutes a double shot, including bringing out the measurements, the bar staff called in Marcia to sort us out, poor girl, and so suitably chastened we paid up.  So a warning - no matter how convenient never be tempted by the hotel bar!

The plate-spinners acrobats
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The next day we headed to the forbidden city, in the middle of Beijing, which is another huge complex of palaces which in ancient times housed the emperors and their thousands of concubines (as well as some other important people).  It has supposedly 9,999 rooms in all, 9 being an important number, and so we only had time to see the most important buildings.  Much of it was under repair behind scaffolding in anticipation of all the visitors for the olympics next year, but I don't think we missed out on two much as each of the halls looked pretty similar to our untrained eyes.  Marcia gave us a great tour, telling us stories of the emperors and architectural points of the buildings. I'm afraid we were a bit of a disappointment to Marcia, as it was SO cold the group got progressively smaller as people dropped off to the comfort of cafes.  At the end there was only the hardy Kiwis, Aussies and Irish left.

Forbidden city and Trent (Aussie guy) ridiculously happy to have starbucks - only allowed when it is below 0 degrees!! Chris (Kiwi guy) is also happy but is too cold to show it
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The biggest reaction Marcia got was when she said "Now for a break, to the left is the toilets, to the right is Starbucks" - you should have heard the gasp of pure delight we all made.  Don't get me wrong, most days I would have been disgusted that Starbucks had made its way into a place like this - but all I cared about was getting my hands on one of their big HOT drinks.  To be fair to Beijing, the building housing Starbucks was indistinguishable from the rest of the buildings - not even any signage.

Wall in the distance
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That night we were bound for Xian via overnight train - something we were looking forward to with a great deal of trepidation!