China Day 3

Up early to catch the free hostel breakfast included in the Great Wall tour, we were tired but ready to go. Cody requested the Swedish plate, which was fruit, scrambles eggs, a slice of processed cheese, homemade yogurt and toast. I ordered the English plate and had fruit, toast, eggs, and my first ever breakfast baked beans. Norman also joined us for the tour, and he ordered the Swedish plate as well. Thus fortified, and with some snacks we had procured the day before, we all piled into the hostel's van and started the 1 1/2 hour ride to the Great Wall.

Once we arrived to the parking lot area (about a mile below the wall itself), we made our way past the souvenir stands, and to the ticket counter. Before giving us out tickets, our "guide" (really just the guy driving us there and back) told us to be back by 1:00, giving us about 3 hours to get to the wall and back. We all then made our way up the 40 minute hike to the wall itself, which was brutal for me, as it was all uphill, on a very steep incline. About 10 minutes into our hike, we thought we should have paid the extra 40 yuan for the lift, but we didn't and I miraculously didn't have a heart attack or aneurysm on the way up (I was close though, having dressed warm in preparation for the cold weather, but it turned out to be a mild day, grrr).

After making it up, we were assailed by one of about 5 vendors that made it up their witht heir cokes and cookies, but we ignored them and began our 2 hour hike and picture spree of the wall.

It was amazing, and while I did lag behind Cody and Norman most of the time, I did make it as far as them. We got some incredible pictures, and we even had a snack break. I am now proud to say I ate an Apple, some cashews, and dried pineapple on the Great Wall of China. I really cannot even describe the views and the feelings it gave me. Check out my pictures on:

http://web.me.com/cwgabel/Desiree/Welcome.html

Hopefully that will give you an idea of my experience.

At the end of our time, we made our way back, but instead of hiking down, to save time and for fun, we took the toboggan down. That's right, they had a toboggan there, and it was 40 yuan. It was so fun, but someone a few people before us crashed, so as I came around one corner, there was a back up of people. It turned out that he went too fast around the corner and didn't lean the right way, so he flipped his toboggan off the track. After that, Cody and Norman were a little annoyed with me because I still went fast, but slowed down a lot around the corners because the side of the track were really rocky and steep, and I refused to crash and get hurt only three days into my vacation. We did make it to the bottom unscathed though, and it was very fun.

We only had to wait 15 minutes to leave, and unlike Cody and some others, I actually managed to avoid buying anything at the Souvenir stand, as they were selling all the same things as any other souvenir stand I had seen so far.

We headed out, and actually made it back to the hostel around 2:30. Cody and I ditched some of our stuff, and we decided to head out to try and catch the Lama Temple again. On the way I grabbed some soba noodles that looked much like Yakisoba, and they were SO good! They were slightly spicy, a little too oily, but ton die for! Anyway, this time we made it to the temple , and it was pretty cool. We couldn't take pictures inside the temple for some reason, but there were a ton of people burning incense and bowing and praying to the many Buddhas there. We even saw the largest Buddha ever carved out of one piece of wood. He stood about 3 stories high and was huge. Even if we were allowed to take pictures, we couldn't have captured a good one of him because he was so huge.

Everything there was so pretty and smelled so good because of the hundreds of sticks of incense being burned outside. We also made sure to buy a few strands of prayer beads and some other things.

Later that night, we met up with our other friends again and attempted to find this bar that was supposed to have good food and around 45 home-brewed Belgian beers. We were so excited, but unfortunately we were having a ridiculously hard time finding it, so we wandered around the area and found a American food diner where we ordered anything from macaroni and cheese to deep-fried catfish. Everything had a twist on it to make it seem upscale though, and some of the food didn't end up to be too good, but it was still fun. After dinner, we all realized we were very tired and parted ways. Cody and I decided to take another trip into the Wangfujing market though, and we ended up wandering around and buying candy-coated strawberries before going back to the hostel. they were fabulous!