The Great Wall - by Karsten

Barb and Karsten posing on the Great Wall
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The Amazing Great Wall

Have you heard the saying that you can see the Great Wall of China from the moon with the naked eye?

Have you heard the saying that you can see the Great Wall of China from the moon with the naked eye? Have you ever wondered what the Great Wall looks like? Is it your dream to see it? Well I have been there and it was truly amazing!

Even this little section is immense. One can imagine the effort it took to construct
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To start things off you can not see the Great Wall of China from the moon. In the year 2003 a Chinese astronaut went to see if this myth was true. He went into space and he could not see the wall so that myth is to be edited in Chinese textbooks, “where it has cast its spell over generations of Chinese” (Lonely Planet).

It took us a while to find out where the entrance to the wall was. We finally found the entrance and we started our big climb. Walking up the wall was pretty tough but warmed us up. The stairs were pretty big and it was steep. We stopped to rest and we saw how far we needed to walk yet. We thought that we would never get to the top. No wonder the Chinese calls it The Long Wall.

The Great Wall snaking off into the distant mountains
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The scenery looks fantastic on the postcards we bought but when we wanted to see the scenery for our selves you could not see anything all that well because it was really hazy. There was snow still on the mountains and even some on the wall. It must look beautiful when on a clear day.

The only thing that I didn’t enjoy is that when you walk by the stalls where people sell junk they basically scream at you to come and buy their stuff. But that is really part of the fun. Some things are pretty cheap and I bought a baseball cap for 80 cents.