A "Great" Day

This morning we got to set out a little later than yesterday. I would have loved to sleep in a little, but someone (who will remain nameless, but it wasn't Brian) woke up about 3am and kept talking and making noise. We did get her to go back to sleep for a little bit, but by 6am we were all woken up again. We got up and had breakfast in the hotel. Again, Lydia was in heaven because they have rice for breakfast and dumplings too. Unfortunately they had the dumplings mismarked, so she ended up with seaweed dumplings. You would think with her love of seaweed that she would have loved those too. But, I guess when you have your heart set on pork dumplings, seaweed just doesn't do it. She has also renewed her love of Chinese yogurt. It's usually plain sweetened yogurt, but it's thinner than in the states. They serve it with a straw so you can drink it. She's had that for breakfast the past few days too. When we first brought Lydia home, she drank yogurt (which we thinned out with milk) every morning. This may become a thing again when we get home. Although I won't let her put nearly as much sugar in it as they do in China!
After breakfast, we packed up our stuff and met our guide, Cindy, to head to the Great Wall of China. It took about 2 hours to drive to the section of wall where we went. The drive was nice - partly through Beijing city and then through the countryside of Beijing too. It was interesting to see the smaller towns along the way. We passed by a huge car factory that makes cars that we'd never heard of. Apparently, Jeep works with a Chinese company and their venture together is a car company that they only have in China. I'm not sure what it's called, because they just had the symbol on the building.
All the way to the Great Wall, Lydia was sure she was going to spot it first. Every time we saw a big bridge, we told her that was it and that we saw it first. When we finally saw it, she was the last to spot it. She had been a little restless in the car, so we let her listen to an audio book and she was so focused on that, she didn't remember to look!
When we arrived at the Great Wall Mutianyu section, we had 3 options. The Great Wall is on the top of the mountain, so we had to get up the mountain before we could even begin walking on the wall. We could either walk up the 1000+ steps, we could ride an enclosed gondola, or we could take a ski lift to the top and ride an alpine slide to the bottom. I was worried that Lydia wouldn't want to take the slide down (because that's what I've been wanting to do), but that was her first choice. :) Yeah!!!
We took the chair lift up to the top of the mountain and climbed across about 5 or 6 sections of the Great Wall. One of the things that I was struck by the first time I was at the Great Wall was how NOT flat it was! I was reminded of this fact again today when we walked on the Wall up and down and around the mountain. It is so crazy as you'll be able to see from some of the pictures. There are really steep steps some places but other places, it's just a really steep incline. There's a marathon held along a section of the Great Wall, including where we were today, each year. I can't imagine running along the Wall. It was hard enough walking!
We walked along the Wall, took pictures and learned some history from our guide. The Great Wall was begun to be built over 2200 years ago and we're still walking on it today! All the history in it is amazing. Also, just in case (like Lydia) you think that you can see the Great Wall from space, you can't. Even though it is amazingly long, it's only about 15 feet wide, so if you can't see your street from outer space, you won't be able to see the Great Wall. We also found out that the first and the last dynasties of China were the Chin and the Ching. Although the characters in Chinese are completely different, they sound almost exactly alike in English. I've gotten them mixed up before, but for today, it's making sense to me.
The best part of taking the long trek out to this section of the Great Wall, was the alpine slide. Lydia wasn't sure about going by herself, but they had a bigger sled and they let us go down together. She was pretty good about getting going, but the lady in front of us was going sooooo slow. Lydia ran into her once, because the rules stated: No Pictures, and No Stopping. Lydia took that literally and the person in front of us got rear ended. I explained to her that even though you aren't supposed to stop, you also aren't supposed to hit someone from behind.
On our way home, we let Lydia play games on the tablet and listen to an audio book because we don't want a repeat of last night! We knew that getting home at 4pm, we would have to do something to keep Lydia occupied or she would end up falling asleep right then and there. We asked our guide and she said that Tienanmen Square was just a little ways down the street from our hotel. After getting some Coke to try to get a little caffeine in our system, we headed down to the square. Our guide suggested going to see the flag ceremony at sunset. We weren't able to go into the square because it was already closed for the day, but we walked the entire length of the square and ended up in front of the Forbidden City to watch to flag ceremony. A group of soldiers came out of the Forbidden City and crossed the street, lowered the flag and brought it back across the street. There were TONS of people there watching. I'm pretty sure Lydia comes by her lack of personal space awareness because of her birth culture. We were pretty close to a lot of people. I guess when there are 21 million people in one city, you have to squish together!
We headed back toward our hotel and dinner. Brian had noticed a sign for Pizza Hut when we were out last night, so we decided to try to order some pizza for supper. The manager spoke English, so ordering was easy. The pan crust tastes pretty much like the pizza at home. We got pepperoni, but I guess either I didn't order it with sauce or they don't make it with sauce. It still tasted good to me. :) We got some Pepsi to drink, since we can't drink the water here. The Pepsi cost about half of what the pizza cost...which was expensive for food in China. Yesterday, the noodles we ate for lunch cost about $5 for all of us, and tonight, we spent about $20. Still not bad, but quite expensive for China. While we were waiting for the pizza to come, Lydia was just about falling asleep. While we waited for the check, she did fall asleep. She wasn't very happy when we woke her up. We told her she could write on the blog when we got home, so she was determined to stay awake.

Lydia's version of the day:
First we had breakfast and then we left the hotel...

That's as far as Lydia got before she fell asleep. Her head literally hit the pillow and she was out. Pray that she stays asleep all night long! We could all use some uninterrupted sleep tonight. Tomorrow afternoon we fly to Inner Mongolia. :)

Lydia loves taking pictures!

Trying to be a serious guard on the Wall

Check out the ups and downs of the Wall

A picture on the slide before we saw the "No Pictures" rule

It only cost 20 RMB to have our picture taken with these guys! They are very inventive in their ways to make money! 

In front of the Forbidden City

After sunset in Tienanmen Square