After we stopped by wrestling practice, we hopped on a bus for an hour and a half drive to the Great Wall. It’s very beautiful here, but MAN, is it ever smoggy! I know they were trying to clean up the air before the Games, but take a look at these pics–it’s still hard to see much in the distance.
Once we arrived at the Wall, he hiked about three quarters of a mile up a steep hill. There were shops on both sides of the streets with people trying to get us to buy anything and everything. It was a cool experience. I’m in Beijing with my girlfriend Kamie, so we had some fun selecting gifts for the people back home. Do you like my fan?!
After the shops, we boarded a gondola and road that the rest of the way up the Wall. Once we arrived at the top, we took lots of cool pictures, but the smog was so thick you couldn’t see very far in the distance. We had fun, though. I wrestled with some of the guys on the wall and we took some cool pictures. Some of the wrestlers road a toboggan back down…I took the gondola!
On our way back down the hill, we made some more purchases in the little shops. It was much more expensive to buy souveniers at the top than at the bottom–lesson learned. We had fun bargaining!
