End of Day 4 - Meeting up with our tour group
After resting in the cool of our hotel room for a couple of hours yesterday afternoon, it was time to meet up with our tour group at 5::00 p.m. Our guide is a young woman from Russia, Katya. She does not speak Chinese, but she does speak the language of the Krygkys, Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Russians. She will serve as our escort through all of the countries and troubleshoots our daily needs and logistics. Katya/Sundowners arranges for local guides at each of the cities to which we will tour.
Our tour group consists of Russ and I, and three others from Australia (Paul and Rachel, ER Physician and Teacher respectively in Alice Springs), and Ben (mining geologist in a gold mine in Perth). We are a very small group. After short introductions, we walked into a section of Beijing where Katya had arranged with a Chinese friend, Alice and her husband Charlie to prepare a meal for us at their tea house. Alice used to work in an antique shop, but as antiques became scarce, her boss started to pass off artifacts claiming them to be antiques. She could not in good conscience, continue to work for someone dishonest.
She and her husband opened a Tea Shop on a small street that caters primarily to local people, not tourists like us.. Her husband is an excellent cook, and served us a lovely meal. After dinner, Alice introduced us to many teas and we got to sample each as she told us what their benefits were and stories behind the ceremonies. The evening was relaxed, delightful, and interesting.
We returned to our hotel and retired to our rooms to pack and ready ourselves for hotel checkout, a hike on the Great Wall in the morning and early afternoon and our train trip to Xian in the evening.
Day 5 - Great Wall
Up by 5:30, breakfast at 6:45, checkout 7:45.. We met our day guide Jerry. He speaks excellent English which he learned in China, and to listen to him, you would probably not guess that he was Chinese. He is fluent and has hardly an accent. Very impressive. By 8:00 a.m., we were on our way to the section of Great Wall that is about 2 hours out of Beijing Mutianju. First Lady, Michele Obama and daughters, were to this section of the wall a few weeks ago when they were in touring in China.
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| Great Wall Snakes Over the Mountain Tops |
We rode a cable care to the mid section of the visible wall that snaked over hills, through valleys and over steep mountains in both directions as far as one could see. The Wall is a masterpiece. Truly worth a visit! Hard The car we rode up on had a sign on it saying that President Clinton had ridden in this same car when he was here. We are following in some fine footsteps.
Today is Saturday and the place had a lot of people, mostly local and some American student groups out for a walk on the Great Wall. The real crush will begin in July when the Chinese school year ends in June. We purchased round trip tram tickets.The wall in the mountains are not as tall as the ones in the flat lands. Jerry explained that the walls only had to be high enough to stop the Mongol horses. The temperature is in the low 90's today, so it warm and there is little shade on the wall with the exception of the periodic guard houses.
The five of us and Jerry walked a section of the wall, just long enough to wake up my blisters from our Thursday Wall walk, take some photos, return to the bottom in a cable car, and walk back down through the tourist vendors, before going to a lunch at a local restaurant of Chinese chestnut chicken, carmelized eggplant, stir-fried green beans, and fried rice. Best food yet.
We are now on the trip back to Beijing, and like everyone else except for the driver, I am going to close my eyes for a little siesta before we return to the hotel and our train trip.
All is well with the Worrall Travel Rs
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