Today was the day we took our tour to the Great Wall. The day started (after we'd already got up!) With a phone call from the tour guide to say she was waiting in reception. This panicked us a bit, as it was half an hour before we were due to leave! After hurrying to get ready the reason turned out to be that she was due to pick a group up from another hostel at the same time...something which didn't seem to bode well for the quality of the day, but thankfully we were to be proven wrong.

Once on the road with everyone on board (7 of us in total...two Kiwis, 2 scandinavian girls and a Japanese girl, quite a random assortment!) We were on our way. Our driver drove with his horn, but didn't seem to take any more risks than anyone else on the road! Our first stop was at a copper vase (and other items) making factory, where we were shown the process of making a vase by hand-sticking on copper wire, then filling in the colour and firing it to make a hard glaze, a very slow process, but an interesting tour. We then went to the Ming tombs, where we had the ceremony explained to us following an emperor's death.

The next stop was a jade factory, and lunch! Were were shown how to tell real from fake jade, and the process of making jade carvings. Lunch was a treat-the best meal we've had so far. This was mainly due to sharing several dishes between all of us, so no flavour got overpowering, and it was very tasty.

After this, we made our way to the Great Wall at Mutianyu, where we lazily took a cable car up, but then did walk along a very steep section of the wall and back in bright sunshine. This was a great (pardon the pun) experience to see even just a relatively small stretch of such a famous landmark. (Though apparently not famous enough to have the option of a picture of the wall to accompany this text!) It was easy to see why it was build where it was, with views stretching for miles, even with the smog! To get down, we rode a tobogganon down a slide, which was really good fun!

On our way back to the hostel we briefly stopped off at a Chinese Doctors to learn about their traditional diagnosis, prevention and treatment, before heading home tired but having had the best day of the trip so far.