The Great Wall - Mutianyu

Considering the time zone change and the long flight to Beijing, I managed to get a descent amount of sleep. We had until mid afternoon Monday until we needed to make our way to the airport for our next flight taking us to our final country destination. Since we don't know when we might be back in a China we thought this was a great opportunity to explore a portion of the Great Wall. We (actually Z) researched a couple different sections that we could see and determined that Mutianyu was the best part and it was only a 1.5 hour drive from our hotel. So we hired a driver for the day, Terrence. He suggested that we go early to avoid the crowds. His suggestion proved to be invaluable. He picked us up at 7:30 am and it was fricking cold. Glad I had brought some gloves along which seemed silly to pack for just one day. He was quite friendly and spoke English quite well. Part of our drive took us through countryside Beijing which was quite scenic.

We arrived at Mutianyu just before 9am and with the help of Terrence got our tickets and off we were. It cost us $160 Yuan RMB each (roughly $30 CAD) for the gondola ride including return and entry to the wall. First was a bus ride up to the gondola which would take us to the wall. There is a second option that you can take which is a chair lift and on the way down you take a toboggan. We opted for the gondola up and down because it was so cold. There weren't many people up there this early which was fantastic because it meant we had most of the sections of the wall all to ourselves. The views from the wall are absolutely breathtaking. It is completely surrounded by dense forest on both sides.

This section of the wall is one of the better preserved parts of the Great Wall and is 2250 metres in length. There are watchtowers placed throughout this section and most had openings on both sides so to better defend against enemies. The wall is built mainly of granite and was first built in the mid sixth century. It was certainly an awesome experience to be able to climb the wall. There were many stairs often quite steep and rather uneven. I'm very glad that it was sunny and not raining during our visit because I couldn't imagine how slippery it would have been. There were a couple times that I felt my shoes sliding slightly as I walked on an incline. The feeling of "being on top of the world" certainly rang true as did the sheer amazement in how the wall has withstood the test of time. Certainly One of the Wonders of the World!

Good thing our trip wasn't a week earlier because China was hosting the APEC meeting in Beijing and I'm quite confident it probably would have been a little more difficult to get around. We heard President Obama visited Mutianyu so I can only imagine it was closed to tourists that day.

You hear about how the Chinese government restricts internet access to its people and blocks many sites that we are accustomed to using every day. It was strange experiencing this firsthand...The Great Firewall of China as it's known wouldn't even allow me to google search.

I was pleasantly surprised by a few things: how clean the streets of Beijing were, how well the roads were signed in both Chinese and English, and how friendly and helpful the people we encountered were even if we were unable to speak their language.