The Great Wall

Now THIS is the way to start the day — all hotel breakfasts should be like this. Besides a whole rank of beverages, yoghurt and toast, there was a delicious assortment of dumplings, bao buns, hard boiled eggs, stir fried veggies, two soups, little strips of crisply fried meat, light-as-air long donuts, and a plate of all important egg tarts. Creamy, melt-in-the-mouth and flaky … quite possibly the BEST ever. Mum would have been in her element.

A brisk walk back to the station to meet up with our tour group. Not your usual 30-strong, trudging, worn-out bunch … this was the MU Bus organization.. They drive you to the Great Wall … arrange your tickets, and then let you loose to spend the time as you wish. Red hanging lanterns line the street (quite impressive as you fly over), and snow still sits in shady patches behind buildings an up on the hillsides. Remnants of Chinese New Year decorations leave vibrant splashes of red and gold everywhere. For some reason all the street light poles have knitted outfits!

There are two different routes to take along the wall … both involving a chairlift/gondola. The less steep one had an exciting-sounding toboggan run back down, but imagine our disappointment to be told we were too old! Their insurance didn’t cover anyone over the age of 60. Hurrumph! So just to show them we took the Steep route … and I mean STEEP, all the way up to tower 20 … the last bit is long and straight up like a ladder.

It was a glorious day … sunny but not too hot. Like most others we paced ourselves, taking breaks by sitting on the steps and enjoying the view. Met and chatted with people from all over, including one young woman from the US who profusely apologised many times over for a certain person’s obnoxious behaviour! For the last bit it was ‘take ten steps, and have a rest’ … but, we did it.

Tonight’s dinner was soup … enormous bowls of spicy broth with udon noodles and vegetables. Wonderful.