The Great Wall of China

Jenny our host asked if we would like to join she and her niece for a trip out to the great wall on Saturday. We met her at 9 AM and off we went. The skies were clear and blue. The Great wall is about an hours drive north of Beijing. The trip take you through some nice mountainous terrain.

Along the way to the Badaling section; Which was our destination, you can see other sections of the wall.

We arrived at the wall and parked the car. Olivia rode in the back pack and was quite happy to be there.

There were alot of people there and many of them were Olympic teams. We noticed teams form Switzerland, Paraguay, Croatia, and Mexico. The wall is pretty cool and its probably the best known tourist site in China. So I'm sure it's tops on every ones list of things to see while in China.
So off we went to climb up the wall. Mao Tse Tung said "You are not a true man until you have climbed the Great Wall". I have done so twice.
Olivia decided to nod off a bit on the hike up.

We were glad to have Jenny along with us as she acted as our photographer so we were able to get lots of pictures together.

The wall was crowded and here is a shot that shows the crowds.

We took a break on the climb up. Notice how steep the steps are.

Towards the top it got very crowded as there was a bottleneck everyone had to pass thru. SO the crowds got really thick on the steepest part of the climb. We made thru and were rewarded by some amazing views.

When we reached the top which is exactly where I climbed to the last time I was here. You see there is probably another 3 miles of the wall that you can hike after this point but it was getting hot with the mid day sun.
We let Olivia out her pack to stretch her legs a bit and have a snack.


We started back down the wall which is a little easier than the climb however it can be steep going down.

A nice picture of Olivia and I.


We got down to the bottom and walked up the left side to the second tower and let Olivia out of the pack to have a snack. She proceeded to make new friend right away.



Olivia also decided that she was going to try to climb up the wall on her own and off she went.

She also thought she would climb down the wall as well.

We headed back to the car and along the way we saw that the road would be used for the torch relay next week as the torch makes it way to Beijing.

And of course Olivia got a souvenir afterwards.