Tuesday was a fairly hectic day. Jessie and I woke up at 4:30am to get ready
for our tour (this is a very ungodly hour for us). Today was the day that we would go and see
the Great Wall of China.
By 6am, after a quick breakfast and getting ready, we sat in
the theater and waited for our tour number to be called. This process usually goes by very quickly,
but today the crew were having some serious technical difficulties.
We didn’t get to board our bus until after 6:45 and by then
we were quite behind schedule. The ride
to the great wall was supposed to take between 2-3 hours. This particular day was extremely foggy (probably
mostly due to the pollution) but our guide assured us that the driver knew
where he was going. About 2.5 hours into
our drive, the bus stopped and the driver walked out on the side of the
highway. The tour guide told us that he
had to call the tour agency to see if they could bribe the police to let us
take the highway because apparently the local officials had just closed the
highway due to poor visibility from the fog.
This didn’t work and so we had to turn around and
re-rout. By the time we reached the wall
it was shortly after 11am. The drive had
taken over 4 hours! Nobody was impressed
by this, but the positive part was that by now, the fog had pretty much cleared
and the wall was much more visible.
We had just about 2 ½ hours to explore the wall and Jessie
and I made the most of it. We
immediately started walking and climbing up it.
I say climbing because the wall was not a flat, smooth surface. It was mainly stairs that climbed up the
mountain so we got a nice little workout while we explored.
The wall stretches over 3.600 miles in length and is
actually visible from the moon. We
learned that it was created by the first Qin Emperor who wanted a defense from
the Mongolians. However it reached its
height under the Ming Dynasty.
As we were walking up this wall, there were quite a few
points where I would be out of breath from the steep incline and hot heat. I could only imagine what it must have been
like for the people who were building the wall.
They didn’t have the machinery or technology we have today and they
hauled all of the bricks and building supplies up the mountains by foot. I couldn’t imagine doing that… I think it
would literally kill me.
Although we only saw a small portion of the wall, it was
amazing to stand on something with so much history and significance.
Following the Great Wall, our tour took us to a local
restaurant for an authentic Chinese meal.
We sat at a table with 8 others and shared various dishes and rice. The food wasn’t that outstanding but it was
interesting to see how picky other people are.
Jessie and I are both fairly adventurous and will try almost anything
(perhaps this is because we traveled for 2 months before this and allowed our
taste buds to experience different foods) however many people around us refused
to try anything that looked a bit different… odd.
The ride back to the ship was much shorter. Within about 2 hours, we were returned back
to the ship and enjoyed another wonderful dinner with our friends and then went
to see a show.
No comments:
Post a Comment