The Great Wall, Friday 11/14/2008

WOW! That is pretty much all I can say. It is pretty amazing. I now understand why they call it the Great Wall. It just goes on forever and ever. We thought about taking one of the tours they offer, but found out that you can just take the bus for 12 yuan and do your own thing. We took a Taxi to the De Sheng Men station and got on the 919 bus and road it to the Badling portion of the Great Wall. It takes about one hour to get there. On the bus there was a tour guide that talked most of the way there and of course everything was in Chinese. Luckily there was a nice girl sitting behind us that asked us if we understood anything and we said no. She told us the basics. The last bus runs at 16:00 and when you get there you need to buy a pulley car ticket and an admission ticket. I am glad she did, because we would have been lost. We got there and followed out little group to the ticket counter and got our tickets 95 yuan total. On the way to the entrance there are shops and a sections that has some bears. I got a couple pictures of the bears.

When we walk by the stores all we here is..."HELLO T-Shirt", or "Hello picture". I am not sure why they just say it to us, I guess we look different or something. Anyway, we walked to the tallest part of the section we were and we were pretty tired when we got there. Some parts are very steep and it feels like you are climbing the side of a mountain, which I guess you really are. Got some pretty good pictures. I have posted some and also added some to an ofoto site. Enjoy.