Ooops! It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. But you wouldn’t know that because I can’t post from China haha.
Anyway, our last three days in Beijing were wonderful. On Sunday we went to the Summer Palace, on the North West end of Beijing where the emperors would go to escape city life back in the day. We found this very ironic, especially when we saw a sign that said there had been over 81,000 visitors to the palace that day! Definitely not a place I would go to escape the city.
But once I was able to imagine the place without so many people, I completely fell in love. The palace overlooks a huge lake, with a man made hill boasting a huge temple and pagoda facing the South. I’m really appreciated how Fen Shua makes everything so pleasant to look at!
The bridges over the lake are beautiful as well, I don’t know how to describe them except by saying they’re very Chinese. One thing that has struck all of us here is how China really is like we expected, with the buildings all having square and beautiful roofs and bright colors everywhere. There’s even paper lanterns that hang in most doorways and entrances!
Anyway, all that is to say that the Summer Palace was beautiful, even with so many people there. We watched the sun set over the lake, then made our way to the Olympic Center. We took the subway there, and the line that went directly under the center was gorgeous! They really went all out here to make the city look amazing for the Olympics.
Once we emerged from the tunnels we joined probably another 80,000 (at least) people as we saw the famous Bird’s Nest and Water Cube. It was so great being there! With so many people there was just a huge level of excitement. Everyone was taking pictures and smiling, and once again there were many people take pictures of us. I think I really enjoyed that part of the trip because not only was it beautiful and historical, but it was a history I could relate to. While I’ve absolutely loved seeing all the historical sites about China, I just don’t know as much history about this country so it hasn’t been as meaningful for me. But the Olympics I get, and the Olympics I loved :).
The next morning we woke up really early for our second Great Wall day! And it was yet again, great. We drove to a different section this time, called Mutianyu. It’s an older and less visited part of the Wall, probably because it’s got some pretty steep parts that make it harder to just explore and enjoy.
But for adventurous people like the four of us, it was absolutely perfect! We took a ski lift to the lowest section of the wall we could, then hiked for two hours to the highest point we could go. And boy was it high. If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, or even if you’ve just seen it, then imagine the steps that Smiegel leads Frodo and Sam up to get into Mordor. That’s how steep the steps were for us at points! Thankfully we were climbing them out of our own free will and weren’t being forced to by a need to save the world. This time anyway….
Ok. Nerd moment over. For those of you who haven’t seen LOTR; they were really steep steps.
We were really glad to have both Great Wall days after that trip. On the first we had beautiful blue sky (because it was National Day and all the factories weren’t running) so we could see for miles, but there were a lot of people. On the second there were less people and we got to explore so much more of the wall, but we couldn’t see far because of the smog. Both were so great!
It’s still hard to believe that we were there. What’s crazy about this whole trip is that I never really pictured myself coming to China, so when I would see the Great Wall in movies or learn about it in history I sort of put in the same category as the moon in my mind: totally awesome but unreachable. But then I did see it! And I hiked on it, and even ran on it in some parts.
What an awesome way to be humbled :). Watch out moon, looks like you’re next!
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