Great Wall of China

中國的長城 (The Great Wall)

We manage to get sunburnt on our last day of holiday!

17/09/2017: Our last day in China

This morning Louise and I were up at the crack of dawn to check out of our hostel (thank god for luggage storage) and head across the city to meet our tour to the Great Wall by 6am. We walked out of the hostel and saw a lot more people around than expected at 5am on a Sunday morning, only to round the corner and realise that it was the morning of the Beijing marathon. To make it worse our local underground station was the closest to the start line and with so many people coming out of it Louise and I could barely get down. Eventually we made our way down to the platform and got the train to ourselves as everyone else had gotten off for the marathon.

We arrived at the hotel lobby to meet the tour group that would be taking us out to the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall of China. We realised that another person in our group had a kiwi accent and found out that he was an Ex-Pat Kiwi living in South Africa but had grown up with and gone to school with our cousin. Typical New Zealand really, the only Kiwi we meet on the whole trip and they know our family.

The bus ride out to the wall took a couple of hours. Once we arrived we bought our tickets for our Chair Lift up to the top of the wall and then Louise, our new Kiwi friend and I started to walk as many watch towers as possible. We were all getting back on planes that afternoon so wanted to make the most of the sunshine. Unfortunately, while the smog in Beijing had been protecting me from getting sunburnt the last two days, there was no smog at the Great Wall to protect me and thus I got horribly sunburnt. It is not fun sitting on a plane sunburnt. At the end of our time on the Wall we got to sled back down to the bottom before we met back up with the bus to go back to Beijing.

Once back in Beijing we decided to go check out Jingshan Park and appreciate the last of the sunshine. Jingshan Park is the big hill behind the Forbidden City that is made of the earth that they had to clear to dig the moat around the City. It has very good views over the Forbidden City and Beijing from the top but is very crowded. However, as it was the hottest day that we had had so far in China, the park was nice and cool. Then it was time to head back to the hostel to pick up our stuff before meeting our transfer to go to the airport.

And so it ends, the life changing trip that was the Trans-Siberian. I couldn’t recommend this trip more, it is a once in a life time experience that you will never regret doing.