My travels to China!: Chinese New Year: Part Deux

Sometimes, blogs have minds of their own when you're adding pictures, sometimes they're more trouble fixing than they're worth. Therefore, thanks to pictures, you get to see the Great Wall hike first, then you get to see everything we did in Beijing prior to the Great Wall! Enjoy!

Day Three in Beijing: The Great Wall

Yeah... exceptional view from the hotel... also, you can't really tell but there's a frosting of snow on the ground! The morning of our Great Wall hike!

Great Wall bound!

He was a big fan of multiple pictures from multiple angles, it was cute. Very Chinese of him.

Best tour guide ever!!!!!

The point beyond the buildings in the middle was completely covered in ice, every person we watched try to cross it fell smack on their butts. So walking up towards it my mom turns to me and goes, "we're sliding down on our butts." "Cause we're going to fall on our ass either way?" "yup" "let's do it." Sat down, soaked my butt, had a blast, we even got our tour guide to do it, too! It was a long hike, a ton of fun and a lot of work, especially with how the weather conditions affected the wall. By the time we were at the wall the sun was out and some was melting off, but not all.

Sheet of ice! I believe this was spot number 1 of ice sheet. We stayed up along the wall on this one.

That tower up there is where we walked to, and took the trolley down.

WE MADE IT!!

"Once intended to ward off enemy attacks. Today it brings together the peoples of the world. The Great Wall, may it continue to act as a symbol of friendship for future generations."-- I really liked that.

We hiked up by Watchtower 2, hiked backwards past 1, to see the "non-tourist area" of the Great Wall- the unrestored part, turned around and walked all the way up to Watchtower 14 to take the trolley down.

Fountain at the place they took us to eat lunch!

The resturant!

Onto Beijing! In Beijing we were lucky enough to see Tianenmen Square, the outside of the Forbidden City (stupid CNY...), the Silk Street Market (not what I was expecting at all), the Summer Palace and got to hike (and sled on our butts down) the Great Wall.
Day one:

So, the smog was kinda bad here, too...

Tienanmen Square, in all it's smoggy glory.

We found some pretty sweet stuff at the Silk Street Market! THIS however, was not one of them. Since Mom accidentally left her coat in Xi'an (notice her bright orange sleeves) we wound up here looking for a winter coat because it was still very very cold in Beijing in February. I bought a new purse (which I totally didn't need...though my mother had me entirely convinced I did!), some other souvenir type things. It was fun, but it was this, like 13 story building with just loads and loads of little and big shops, just nothing that I expected (I expected like a row of street vendor type shops, ya know, on a STREET, since it's called SILK STREET) and I introduced my mom to hot pot! (I love hot pot, I don't think she was impressed.)

Day Two: We attempted the Forbidden City again to no avail, went to the Summer Palace instead. It was gorgeous. Seeing it in the Summer sounds like that would be pretty cool, too. It rained while we were there but it was still amazing.

After wandering around the Summer Palace for a few hours, experiencing some amazing views, we took a rickshaw to the metro! He totally ripped us off, too. Touche, Rickshaw man, touche! Then, we went for Peking Duck at a well rated restaurant!.. Turns out, the Peking Duck in Macau was better. Oops! Sorry, ma!