China - Day 4

China – Day 4
Today, we visited the Great Wall of China. We visited a part of the wall called Mutianyu. It was by far some of views I have ever seen. We hired a driver named Young, to drive us an hour from Beijing to this part of the wall. This part isn’t traveled much by the Chinese; it is visited more by Europeans, Canadians, and Americans. On the way Young took us to a factory that produced copper art work. We saw how they made copper pots, painted them, and fired them. We also got sucked into buying a few but they are very beautiful! Once we got to the Wall we were mobbed by locals selling t-shirts, hats, little figures, anything you could think of. We took a cable car ride from the base of the mountain to the top to get on the wall. From the minute we got on the wall the views were stunning! We walked down one side and took many pictures. Words cannot describe how cool it was. After we walked down one way we came back up and decided to go up the other way. We ran into a few Americans on our journey that wanted to share experiences and talk to someone who spoke English. At one point on our journey up you could see the Wall go on up into the clouds. It was an unbelievable site. On our trip down from the wall we got into our cable car and noticed a sign that read; “President William J. Clinton took this car down the Great Wall on June 28th, 1998.” Being Americans we had to take a picture of it! After spending a few hours at the Great Wall, we decided to head back and our driver stopped road side market and bought us some apples grown deep in the mountains and they were fantastic.
Once we got back into Beijing our driver took us over to Olympic Village. We saw the aquatics center, the bird cage, and where the torch was lit. We were unfortunately not able to go inside any of the buildings because you needed special clearance to enter the village. From there our driver took us to a tea shop that was supposedly the best in China. We had a special tasting where a woman explained every kind of tea, and there benefits. The tea was fantastic! After our tasting we headed back toward our hotel for some authentic Beijing dinning. Dinner consisted of eating with chop sticks and trying to figure out what we would like. I had the shrimp and scallops and it was great! I defiantly recommend eating with chop sticks for a week; it will give you an appreciation of a fork!

Tomorrow we head off to the Forbidden City.