One More Item Checked Off The Bucket List

Do you have a bucket list? You know, a list of things you want to do before kicking the bucket. Well, I do. One of the things on my list was to see the Great Wall of China and yesterday I FREAKIN' CLIMBED THE WALL!!!! Alas, one more item checked of the list. I realize this is a very touristy thing to do, but really, you would have to be a complete idiot to travel all the way to China and not check out the Wall (in my humble opinion). It was everything I hoped for. Amazing. Spectacular. I think the stars aligned for us. The weather was beautiful and the sky crisp blue (unusual for Beijing area). There are many places you can visit the wall. The place we went to was about 1.5 hours outside of Beijing. There are three ways to get to the 'top' of this particular location. You can take a gondola or cart-tram thingy and get there in 5 minutes or you can climb it and get there in 1.5 hours. We chose to climb the bitch. It was a hell of a hike but completely worth it. We were joined by lots of tourists (mostly Chinese, some of which wanted a photo with us. Side note--some Chinese appear as if they have never seen an American before. They look at us as if they have just seen bigfoot or something. It makes for some pretty funny interactions. I will try to blog about this later). For those of you who visit the wall, I recommend biting the bullet and climbing it. Unless of course you have bad knees, but then again I was passed by a few 80-year old men who were smoking and walking with cane but whatever. As the saying goes, it is not the destination but the journey that counts. I couldn't agree more in this case. Every huge staircase we climbed revealed a more magical view than the one before. Amazing!! I hope to return one day to an area that is not as crowded with tourists and perhaps spend a few days walking/camping on the wall. It was good for the soul. PS- I recommend climbing on the way up but I won't judge you for taking the easy way down. They have little single-seat cars on rails that you can ride down for 30 rmb. The best 30 rmb I have spent on this trip.

With everything good there must be bad I suppose. The entrance to the wall was a bit like Disneyland with mountain bears on display and vendors selling Great Wall ashtrays, snowglobes, and keychains. Perhaps the saddest thing, however, was the Starbucks at the bottom. Not kidding. Apparently the wall can keep out China's mortal enemies but didn't stand a chance against Seattle.