The Great Wall - Badaling

I visited the Great Wall on a misty September Sunday afternoon. Taking the Beijing Tour Company tour instead of the more expensive English speaking hotel tour was quite a treat for practicing my Chinese listening skills...unfortunately with limited (very limited) Chinese speaking skills I only heard "Yes" and "No" and something about a horse when we drove by this statue on the way there.

Fortunately I had a very friendly Chinese girl around my age sitting behind us on the bus. She lived and worked in Australia (so her English was great) but was back in China visiting her family on holiday. She did a little interpreting when we needed to know something important from the tour guide. Most of the informational signs were in English as well as Chinese which was quite helpful.

We visited the section of wall known as "North Pass" of Juyongguan pass which is more simply referred to as the "Badaling". This is a very well maintained section of the wall north of Beijing by about a 1 hour tour bus ride away.

When we arrived, there was a throng of people trying to enter (and exit) through a little tiny door that led up to the top of the wall. The easiest way to get away from the crowds was to climb. And climb we did. I am pretty fit especially in my legs from all the squats in the gym. But nothing in the gym prepared me for the 40 degree angles and thousands of stairs to get to the top of the ridge. Getting there was worth the view. Yeah the mist limited the view but in a way it added to the mystical feel of being on "The Great Wall".

The pics are self explanatory I think. First one is of me with the wall coming out of my head (LOL). Second one is with the crowd looking up at the Guard House/Watch Tower that we would pass through. Third is a great pic of some of the stairs we faced to get up the ridge. The fourth and fifth ones (if you click on any pic, it will take you to a larger version) are pretty much from the top of the section we climbed. The last pic was taken from the road leading to our parking lot. I was able to hit Beijing while quite a bit of the Olympic decorations were still up. This is on the side of the hill in front of the wall. You can see the Great Wall off in the upper left corner.

I can now check off visiting one of the "7 wonders of the World".