Today's one of our big event days: the Great Wall of China.
Pretty exciting, unlike the air in the port of Tianjin, which was grey, overcast and so thick with gunk you could punch it.
Great.
Our luggage had been collected the night before, so we had our final breakfast on ship and joined the Great Wall tour group in the Princess Theatre. Once again I was pleased to see how much more orderly the tour process was compared to our first cruise with Princess.
The disembarkation went smoothly, with the customs officials barely glancing at our paperwork, and were escorted to our buses by smiling tour guides just as it started to drizzle.
The weather may have been foul, but at least the people weren't.
Our guide, a young Beijing man named Kevin, kept us entertained and informed during the three hour drive to the Great Wall, with snippets from Chinese history, Chinese weddings (including his own wedding last year), information about Beijing, property prices, tales from his own travels overseas to Germany and Canada, and the joys of Asian squat toilets.
The latter is an ever-popular topic with travellers. We stopped for a "bathroom break" half way to the Wall, and there was a highly engaged discussion amongst the women on tactics for coping with Chinese toilets. Way too much information for the men, and I'm not going to recount the details. I and most of the males went back on the bus and left them to it.
As we skirted Beijing Kevin explained that the planners had built a ring road around the original centre of Beijing. As the city grew they added another ring. Then they added a third. Then a fourth...
They're now up to ten. Yowza. Big city.
I've heard population estimates ranging from 20 million to 60 million people, with official figures closer to the former. Instead of using suburbs to describe where they live the locals say "I live near Ring Road 4, north".
While bypassing Beijing via Ring Road 6 then weather began to clear. We'd heard horror stories about Beijing air pollution, but there was very little haze. I suspect Beijing may have had a bit of rain to clear the air. Whatever the reason, we were grateful, and hoped it would still be clear on the Wall.
It was. Great.
Visibility was better than I could have reasonably expected. We caught glimpses of the Wall as we drove up, and the excitement began to build.
The next question was what the crowds would be like. I'd met a passenger who said on his first visit the buses were backed up several kilometers from the car park, and tourists gave up riding and walked the rest of the way, only to jostle their way through the crowds.
Being a weekday after a week-long holiday the heavy tourist period was behind us, the carparks virtually empty.
Ideal weather, no real crowds, and we were at THE GREAT WALL OF FREAKIN' CHINA!!!
We climbed up very, very step steps to the second level of the towers. Emma's knees were protesting, but there was no way she was going to miss out on this. When she was six years old China was still largely closed to Westerners, but she decided she wasn't going to let something like that stop her from visiting the Great Wall. Another childhood dream achieved.
Being knee-problem free I was charging up the steps like a deranged mountain goat, feeling pretty exhilarated myself.
All pretty awesome.
Sadly we had to go - given more time we would have walked more, although considering at its peak the Great Wall was 6,000 km long we might be challenged to do it all in a day - and had lunch at a Jade Factory. Most of the food was authentic(-ish), and quite good (I was chuffed that Emma and I were thee only ones able to use chopsticks. We're so worldly.)
We watched them cutting the jade, a fascinating process which requires a higher degree of skill than I will ever have, and Emma bought a lovely jade pendant (it would have been rude not to, right?), then back on the bus for the final ride to our hotel near Ring Road 2.
Beijing was cleaner and greener than I expected, with lots of leafy boulevards, and green belts. It reminded us a bit of St Kilda Road in Melbourne. A St Kilda Road with quite a few seriously massive buildings, very modern, and about four times as wide as I'm used to. There's still a bit of old Beijing around the place, but it appears to be in the process of being squeezed out.
The Doubletree Hilton was also very modern, with huge rooms by typical Asian standards. Our only disappointment was that we wouldn't be able to truly appreciate it as we had a 7.40am flight to Hong Kong the next morning, and our bus to the airport was scheduled to leave at 3.50am.
Great.
We'd love to have more time in Beijing, but not this trip. Given the fabulous day we'd had we weren't complaining. So lights out and asleep just after 8pm, then off on the final leg of our adventure. HONG KONG.
No comments:
Post a Comment