The City and the Wall

Yesterday we caught a bus to the Forbidden City, where we and many thousands of others viewed the Imperial buildings. Only eighty thousand people are allowed in per day and a whole lot of them were there with us. We enjoyed the visit and the buildings are truly majestic but we were glad to escape the crowd and walked back to our hotel.

Laurie took a class in the evening on how to make dumplings and I got to sample her cooking when she came back to our room. I visited a craft beer joint down the lane while Laur was taking the class.

This morning we got up early to leave at 6:30 to visit the Great Wall at Simatai, which is roughly two hours away when you have a driver that drives as fast as ours did. The guide book said the site opens at 8:00, but the guide book was useless. It turned out we were not allowed in until 10:00, so we could have slept later. The joys of independent travel.

We rode a cable car most of the way up the mountain and walked the rest of the way. Simatai is known for how steep the wall is between the towers. The wall has been partially restored but is not like some sections that have been completely rebuilt. It was everything I had hoped to see and experience. Only six hundred people are allowed to visit, but I couldn't tell if that was at one time or per day. It was not crowded and at times we were alone; there were no where near six hundred people there.

We were tired after walking on the wall and climbing up and down the steep sections and were glad we had a car waiting to bring us back to the hotel. We had a simple supper at a place across the lane from us and returned to our room for the night.