Sorry I've been neglecting my blogging duties, I'm always really tired when I get a chance to do so that I sleep rather than type, but my batteries are charged right now so I'm going to try and recap the last three days of my life for you in about 500 words or less.
So Tuesday morning was the big day, we were going to visit the Great Wall. Got on the bus at 8am and drove about an hour and a half through some small towns surrounding Beijing up into the mountains and to a very small section of the Great Wall. I say small section for two reasons; firstly the Great Wall isn't just one Great Wall, it's many Great Walls, that is to say they're not all connected, so it's impossible to just walk continuously on the wall without having to get off at some point. Secondly, the Great Wall is 2,000 miles long, we might of covered two of them.
I think I might have mentioned in an early post that this was the part of the Beijing trip that I was most looking forward to, and it did not disappoint. Where we were there were a few small villages, but no remnants of the vast city of 16 million people that we had just left, lots of beautiful mountains and other "natury" stuff (that's for you mom). Can't decide if it's more impressive that water carved the Grand Canyon or that man created the Great Wall. Very cool.
From there we drove through the country side for about an hour and visited the Ming Tombs where 13 of the 16 Ming emperors are buried, not that cool.
Wednesday we visited the Olympic Village, also very cool. We were able to tour both the water cube and the Birds nest (Birds nest is a lot bigger in person and water cube much smaller). We actually got down to the floor of the birds nest where we could sprawl out under a perfect sunny day. Kind of a surreal feeling being there after so many great athletes competed while I was half way around the world watching on TV.
Thursday we visited the Beijing urban planning museum which wasn't that cool but it did have an awesome model of the whole city. From the museum we went and checked out some old Hutong neighborhoods which date back to the Qing dynasty (200 years). We toured a guy's house, rode on rickshaws and visited the Drum and Bell tours which were how they use to communicate time back in the day before clocks.
Going to go check out some street markets today then we're back to Shanghai via train later tonight, it's been a great visit that has gone really fast. Hope all is well.
-AL
Thursday, March 26, 2009
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Andrew,
ReplyDeleteJust so you know: I HAVE been reading your blog all along, but just became an official groupie. Glad the Great Wall didn't disappoint. I'm going to e-mail Kent with your blog info. Remember that he suggested that you go to The Great Wall? You were tentative and unsure about it all. Now look at you!! I am so amazed and impressed by your openess to the whole experience. Also glad to hear about "naturey" stuff. Did you see anything in the genus Carex? Ok, getting you to be open (and interested) in floristic studies is a bit too much...
Kepp the info coming!
Love,
Jill