The Great Wall

I assume that by this point everyone knows that the idea of the Great Wall of China being one continuous wall is a myth, or at least that it can't really be seen from the moon (unless you can pick out a human hair from 2 miles away), right? Well, I can assure you it is not one continuous wall and instead is made up of many different sections constructed piece by piece by different emperors from around 500 BC to 1600 AD. Because of this, I'm not sure how they come up with the estimated length of 5,500 miles. Either way, it's long and it's big. You can visit many different sections of the wall of course, but we ended up choosing the section at Mutianyu mainly because it's close to Beijing, not too crowded, and our hostel offered a tour. Sure, it's not the most "authentic" wall experience, considering you take a chair lift up the hill to the wall and a luge back down, but it would have to do. There are places where you can go, have the wall all to yourself and even sleep in one of the guardhouses, but I cannot stress just how cold Beijing was. We met one guy who tried to do this but quit because he was freezing and didn't want to leave the campfire. Ironically, we had a beautiful clear day when we went - probably our warmest day in Beijing. But who can turn down a chance to ride a luge?

took the cable car up. good call because it saved a ton of time

the snack vendors basically forced this pic on us, but it was funny

I don't know where we got our expectations from, but we were expecting a leisurely stroll along the wall where we'd just be happy to say we did it. Boy, were our expectations way off! Far from a leisurely stroll, it was steep with tons of stairs and we had an amazing time. Was better than anticipated. The views of the surrounding mountains were amazing but we really loved seeing the wall snake off into the distance along impossibly narrow mountain ridges.

the mountains surrounding the wall

the picture doesn't do it justice. Look at the walls along the mountain ridges

They gave us 3 hours to explore so we pushed ourselves and made it farther than anyone else in our tour. After climbing a ridiculously steep section we were rewarded with a brief walk on an unrestored section of the wall. The Mutianyu section was originally built in the mid-6th century but what is remaining today was built in the late 1500s. Most areas were really nice and well-kept but this one section was crumbling and overgrown with plants. Sounds kind of lame, but it was cool to see a different side of the wall.

that's a lot of stairs - around 450 actually

Steph on the crumbling wall

Overall we had a great day at the wall. Top 5 experience for sure. If we ever go back, we'll definitely spring for a 2 or 3-day overnight trip, but we were more than happy with our first visit. The luge ride down was just the cherry on top!