Today the Great Wall visit!

There are several sections that can be visited around Beijing, but they differ in the amount of restoration that has been performed and the number of people trying to sell you souvenirs. We went to Mutianyu, as it is one of the more original looking sections and isn't the big well known swarming with tourists section.

Since we only had two hours on the wall (the bus-ride to get there already took some time) we decided not to do the climb to the wall. Instead we took the cable car, saving us some valuable time.

Christopher and I decided to "do" the entire track, which in the end was quite exhausting. Especially the 454 steps to guardpost 1 as the view from this post were absolutely breath-taking. Nearing the other end of the wall really took out the last of my energy and we were both happy to take the slideway down (rodelbaan). According to a Chinese woman we are now real men, since we walked the Great Wall!!!

Altough the weather in the morning was nice and cool, the temperatures were pretty high when we were on the wall, so we were completely sweaty when we got down. Luckily a nice street vendor sold me a cheap t-shirt and we also bought some cool emperor-style hats. (I will post the picture later).

After a quick shower at the hotel I found out that the exposed parts of my skin had adopted the national colour of China, which was interesting. After this we went to a kung-fu show, which was entertaining but a bit too commercial in my opinion. We nevertheless had fun.

Back at the hotel we had to do our laundry and grab a quick meal. According to our guide, the laundry and dryer would only take 45 and 15 min. each, so this would still enable us a good nights sleep. Unfortunately, partially due to our lack of Chinese (so we initially used the wrong setting) drying our laundry took a bit longer, so we had to get up in the middle of the night to check on it. It was finally done at around 4:30....