Beijing Day One - The Great Wall of China

Hello, Eliza and I made it safe and sound to Beijing and we are looking forward to enjoying it and the Chinese New Year in the capital of China.

On our first full day in here we decided to head up to the Great Wall before everyone else is on holiday.  The town, Mutianyu was two hours north of Beijing in the mountains.  There were other foreigners on the tour with us and we spent a few minutes talking with each. 

Here are the pictures, we picked a beautiful clear day (cold as well) to visit this 300 year old section of the Great Wall.

Looking up from the parking lot at the Wall.

The travel to and from the wall you had three options, one was free (the forty minute walk up and down), the other two cost 80 yuan for a round trip (the cable car or the slide).  I took the cable both ways but Eliza took the slide down and she said it was a great trip especially because the slide was one that you could steer and apply brakes yourself. 

The beginnig of the shots of the surrounding mountains.

The wall covering the mountains in one direction.  These way tourists could walk through 15 gate towers, we were going to go that way...

But instead we decided to take the shorter way that would only take us through 4 guard stations, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Can you make out the village from the trees?

These were probably some of the least steep steps we were going to be walking today.

Look aren't they kind, they gave us hand rails to help up this hard part.

These is the same view of those stairs from the top, very steep indeed.

I don't know if you can really tell but these steps are more like a ladder than stairs.

K.O.ed - I didn't move from that spot for quite a while.

The unrefurbished part of the wall continuing up into the mountains.

"I see your sign and I ignore it" 

This picture upsets me becuase I got conned out of 80 yuan for this pic but it is still pretty cool so I can't be too upset.  Except that the others refused to pay that much but meh.

So that's the Great Wall at Mutianyu.
It is now Chinese New Year weekend and as we found out today a lot of the tourist attractions are closed for the holiday so it's going to be a relatively quiet weekend at the hostel but tonight they are giving us free food and we are going to party all together.