Jingshan Park

Forbidden City

Timinin Square

The Great Wall of China

What can I say about the great wall? Well… it’s totally deserving of it’s name! It’s absolutely massive – we only walked the 10k stretch between Jinshanling and Simatai but that very nearly killed me! If the Great Wall was flat and always in good condition it would have been a nice walk with beautiful scenery, but it’s not – some sections of the wall are close to 90 degrees with steps that are about a foot tall each, other sections have a similar incline but with steps that are massively damaged, leaving you with not a lot to hold on to as you climb.

Walking this section of the great wall really is an epic feat of endurance, and not something that I thought I would have been able to complete, however once you get up there, you are driven to keep going by the sheer beauty of the landscape and the urge to see what you could find around the next corner!

There are loads more photos on my flickr account, so feel free to check em out – despite carrying a 13MP camera, I’m resizing to 800×600 for upload just because the internet connection here is a bit on the slow side.

Flight in was almost perfect, can’t fault a thing! I got a bit of a grilling at immigration after being picked out for a random Interview but it wasn’t that bad, especially since the police lady that interviewed me was young, friendly and pretty cute!

Beijing airport was amazing, huge open spaces and polished marble floor everywhere you look – it was more like the lobby of a five star hotel than an airport!

We’ve just got to the hotel, beijings “Sitting on the city Walls Courtyard House Hostel” which seems really traditional and cute. It’s hidden down a back ally in what is locally known as a HuTong. Even the taxi driver had trouble finding it! The room is a bit small, but clean and cool and the staff are friendly snd helpful so I can’t really fault it so far!

Steph has just passed out on the bed so we’re going to have a short kip then go out for a roam around the local area – we’re just around the corner from the forbidden city and Tiniman
Square, literally five minutes away!

Can’t seem to get on Twitter or Facebook at the mo, even through iPhone apps, but that was to be expected. Email and blog are working fine tho so feel free to comment or email if you want to get in touch!