Beijing Part 1

On the morning of October 1, 2015, at 7 am, we got on a bus outside our hostel and rode north north north. It was a sunny but cold day and probably the hardest wind I've seen in my life. 

We also accidentally picked the actual most difficult portion of the wall to hike. Oops. 

Previous to this experience, we had been living in 90 degree weather with at least 80% humidity. We traveled across the entire country (by train, which took 22 hours, by the way) to Northern China and although it wasn't cold necessarily, it felt cold to us. The wind certainly didn't help matters. 

Here is me sitting in one of the guard tower windows which honestly was not safe because underneath me was a good 40 feet drop, but photo op. 

Remember how I said that this is the most difficult part of the wall to climb? It eventually took its toll. We thought we had gone to 4 out of the 6 guard towers in our hike area, so we were nearing the end with the fifth in sight. But we still had to hike all the way back to the beginning, and I was WIPED OUT.

However, shortly after this seemingly certain defeat, some very kind German people who had come on the tour with us came from that tower and said "Don't give up now! That's the sixth tower around the corner!" So I jumped right up and we basically ran the remainder of the distance to the sixth tower.

PC: Manhattan Mike 

The hard part was honestly going back down. My legs were literal jello the whole way down, and I couldn't stop to sit down or else I wouldn't be able to get back up. BUT I can pretty much say it was one of the coolest things I've done and I felt so good after we were done. I would hike it every day if I lived there! Theoretically at least. 

The next day, on the first official day of the National Holiday, we ventured to Tiananmen Square which was one of the craziest ideas we ever had because China in general is crowded, and Beijing in general is very crowded, and everyone in China goes to Beijing for the National Holiday, so we were swimming in people. 

The word "crowd" took on a very different definition for us that day. 

Then we turned into celebrities. Chinese people are obsessed with white people, especially Americans. It was entirely normal in Guzhen for us to walk around with a person or two following us and taking pictures or videos of us. But with the very high concentration of people, the amount of people taking photos of us increased exponentially. One person would stop us and we'd turn around to 12 more people with their cameras and phones, smiling hugely right at us. It took us probably 3x longer to do everything that day just because of how frequently we were stopped. 

Anyway, it was a great experience regardless of the large crowds and the fact that we had climbed 5 miles of the Great Wall just 24 hours earlier.