Today, we make our second visit to the great Wall of China, but more on that later.
We had set an alarm last night on both of our phones for 5:15 AM this morning, but I was up a little before that. I turned off both alarms so they did not disturb Stephanie when they went off. I showered and made a cup of coffee with the k-cup machine in the room, it is not great, but better than nothing, and I know it is made with purified bottled water.
I woke Stephanie up shortly afterward. We had to be ready for our Viking tour that was leaving at 7:00 AM this morning, and we needed to go downstairs and eat breakfast beforehand. The hotel was opening the breakfast buffet early just to accommodate the Viking tour groups. It normally opens at 6:30 AM, but today, it was opening at 6:00 AM to give us enough time to eat before we left on the tour.
After breakfast, we headed back to the room to get all of our gear for the long excursion day, we were going to be gone for over eight hours today.
Todays Viking excursion goes to the Great Wall at Badaling, which is the most visited section of the restored wall near Beijing. It will be interesting to compare this section with the one we saw on our private tour at Mutianyu.
Most everyone was already in the lobby when we went back downstairs and met with our group, and we all headed outside to our waiting bus. It was a little hazy this morning, but the forecast was for partly cloudy skies today. It had been so warm yesterday that I had decided to wear shorts today.
Once we were on the bus, we headed out for the 90 minute drive to the city of Badaling. We were leaving early to avoid some of the traffic and also the crowds at the Great Wall. The traffic was lighter, but still pretty heavy and we crept along until we got outside of the 5th Ring Road, and the traffic lessened.
We were hoping for a sunny day, but as we drove out of Beijing, it seemed to get even more cloudy. We had known that the temperature at Badaling would be cooler, the Great Wall at this location is at around 3,000 feet in elevation.
Michael filled us in on some of the history of the Great Wall, some of which we had already heard on our private tour. He did tell us about the restoration efforts for the two sections of the wall, and that was pretty interesting. We could see some of the wall as we got closer to our destination, and we also passed through some of the old city walls that were built around the city of Badaling, which were different from the Great Wall.
We arrived in Badaling and parked in the bus parking area, From there, we walked to the ticket office. On the way, Michael pointed out where we would be meeting later for a Viking-hosted reception at a nearby hotel. We were all going up to the wall together, but then we would be free to walk on the wall and then go back down to this area to head to the hotel for the reception. The bus was scheduled to leave Badaling at 11:15 AM, and we all needed to be back at the bus by that time.
It was quite cool out and almost everyone in the group had brought a jacket. We knew it was supposed to be cooler, but if the sun had been shining through the clouds, it would have been nice, but without the sun and having a little breeze, it was chilly. We had dressed for a sunnier and warmer day, but it was not too bad and we knew when we started hiking on the wall, we would warm up with all of the steps and steep inclines.
We all walked over to the station for the lift up to the top of the mountain. It was a funicular, but in China, it is called a ground cable car, meaning it is driven by cables, but is on a track on the ground. We were here early and it was not yet open. Michael went to get all of the tickets, and we all waited outside. By the time Michael returned with the tickets for our group, the cable car was open, so we proceeded inside and out onto the ramp to get onto the cable car. We got into the front car so we could video and see out the front window as we went up the hill. As with all funiculars, at the midpoint, the track split and we passed the car heading downward. This is done to balance the lift and use gravity to help drive the cars.
It was not a long ride, only about two minutes, and we arrived at the top of the hill and got off. There were still quite a few steps to the wall itself, and of course, it was all uphill. There was a set of metal steps that went up over the side of the wall to the top that we had to take to get onto the wall walkway. Michael gathered our group of twenty up for a group photo. They were providing the photo along a book that included a Great Wall Climbing Certificate, and many other photos of places we will visit on this trip. The sample they had looked nice, so we opted to purchase one, the price was $20.00, which included the 8 x 10 group photo which did not seem bad.
After the group photo, we were on our own to explore the wall. We headed to one end and that was as far as the wall restoration was completed on this end, and we could not go any farther. We took photos and headed back and up the steep hill to one of the towers, which was the highest tower on any section of the restored wall.
From there, we could see down to the area where the funicular/cable car started, and the rest of the wall going toward the other direction. There was a section of the wall that was accessible from the ground, but it was quite a climb to get from there up to this tower. From that same ground location, there was also a section of the wall going upward in the opposite direction, and we could barely see though the haze that a lot of people were also climbing that section.
It would be quite a hike to go down from the highest point we were now at all the way to the ground level and then back up that opposite side, we were struggling with the portion we were climbing on, it was really steep just to get to this tower, and the steps were quite tall. From this tower downward was a really steep section of steps, and Michael had advised that we do not go down them, and we did not.
We headed back to the metal steps and then back down to the cable car. Michael had provided everyone with a ticket for the ride down on the cable car, I guess some people touring here might opt to ride only one way, so there were separate tickets for each direction.
The cable car was at the station, so we boarded, and shortly, were on our way back down. After arriving at the bottom, we walked to the hotel for the reception, which was a pretty good distance away, and all uphill. We were now sweating from all of the walking on the wall and this walk to the reception. The sun never came out, and it did not look like that was likely to happen anytime soon. If anything, it seemed to be even more cloudy.
We arrived at the hotel and headed to the second floor and into the room that was set up for the reception. There were other Viking groups that had arrived at the wall this morning after us, and it was set up for quite a large group. In total, there are six busloads of people on the Viking Tour. Three busloads were at our hotel and three were at another hotel in Beijing. Each large bus only had 20 people on it, so it was a nice group size.
There were light snacks and refreshments being served. There were sodas, beer, and wine, both red and white. Stephanie and I picked up a glass of the white wine and went to a table to sit with some of our new friends we have met on this tour. It is nice that we will all be together on the land portions of this trip, so we are getting to know a few of the couples in our group.
Michael sat with our table for a bit and then he headed back to the bus, reminding us that we needed to be there by 11:15 AM. We got up to leave a short time later, but several people in our small group needed to use the restrooms in the hotel lobby, so we headed there first. It takes women longer to use these facilities, either from having to wait to use the single western style toilet, or just in general having to use the squat toilets. Nonetheless, we were a little behind schedule leaving for the long walk back to the bus. One in our group commented that there were still people at the reception from our bus, but I knew that was not the case. As we got closer to the bus, we could see Michael looking for us, and we were the last of our group to get to the bus. Luckily, there were six of us, so it was not just me and Stephanie. I was out front because I knew we were late. By the time we got to our bus, the last of the people who were “on time” were just getting on the bus so we were not really that late.
From here, we were going to another hotel to have lunch and to visit a Jade Carving store in the hotel. It was about a 45-minute drive to the hotel and it was quite fancy-looking, it was not a Western hotel chain, so we did not recognize the name.
We headed inside and first were given a brief tour of the jade and given an explanation of how it is found and made into different pieces. Then we headed upstairs to a large banquet room that had tables set up for the three different Viking bus groups from our hotel.
Eight of our group sat together at one table. The food was placed on a large lazy susan that was in the middle of our round table. It was a little difficult to serve the food, it required everyone’s coordination. No one could not move the food until everyone had served themselves from what was in front of them, or relatively close by. Once everyone was served, we could rotate the lazy susan to the next dish, always going in the same direction. The only issue was that they kept bringing out more dishes of food, and then just placing them wherever there was space, so that threw off the coordinated effort because now we had to get to the new dishes. You also needed to make sure your beverage glass was not to close to the lazy susan or it might hit the serving pieces in the bowls of food, causing a spill, which almost happened a few times. It was sort of a pain, I think it would have been easier just to pass the serving dishes around the table.
The food was good, there were some different things to eat and then some things more familiar to us. Stephanie and I had Chinese beer with our lunches. In the end, we were all full, and everyone seemed to find one of the dishes that they liked the best. There was certainly enough food, we had a lot of leftover food when we were all finished eating.
Stephanie wanted to go and look as some of the jade pieces in the showroom, so we headed downstairs, escorted by Linda, the person from the hotel who had been giving us the jade tour before lunch. She seemed to be in charge of the lunch as well as the tour and any shopping.
First, Stephanie looked at some beaded jade bracelets but decided they were not that comfortable to wear, the beads were fairly good size, probably around 8-10 mm in diameter.
Then she looked at two different bracelets made with longer and flatter jade pieces, hooked together with silver covered and then covered with 18kt white gold. One was a little more fancy and had some additional peridot stones set in between the longer jade pieces. I did not like that one as much, there was a lot of space between the jade with the peridot set in between, and there was no need to get peridot, it just added to the cost when we were really trying to get jade. On her wrist, you could only see one piece of jade at a time because of the length of the jade pieces, and the extra space in between for the peridot. In the end, we picked out the smaller jade bracelet, it just looked better on her wrist.
Stephanie also picked out a small jade cat to take home as well. Stephanie negotiated a price with the lady and we went to pay. We used our Capital One Credit Card, we were not willing to go through the hassle of using the other one that had already been shut down once. The credit charge went through and all seemed well. First, they used the touchless feature of the card and then inserted the chip into the reader, maybe the touchless method had not worked for some reason, but the receipt came out and the charge went through.
We left the store and headed out to the lobby of the hotel where the store and lunchroom were located. While I was there, I received a text from Capital One wanting me to answer Y of N on the charge that had just gone through, to verify it was legitimate, and it also stated that we may have to try the charge again once we responded. Of course, I typed in Y for yes, it was a charge we were making, but it had obviously gone through already, we had a receipt and we had already left with the purchases. Maybe that was the issue with the touchless, maybe the chip insertion was the “second attempt” but no one had said anything, and no one was chasing after us to re-run the charge again after we did the confirmation of purchase verification through the text.
It was only a short time later until we all boarded our bus to head for our next destination, The Ming Tombs Sacred Way.
Our local guide told us some of the history around the Ming Tombs, there were several emperors buried in this area and their tombs were at the foot of some of the mountains nearby. The area we were heading to was a large park and was the entrance to the tomb area where the emperors were carried on the way to their burial sites.
We arrived and the bus dropped us off location. There weren’t many people here visiting, and after we entered, we could see why. This was basically a very long cobblestone path that was lined on both sides with various animals and Chinese figures made of stone, each one had a standing and kneeling version. It was at least a mile long. There was a building at the entrance to the pathway, and inside was a large stone turtle, and it was supposedly good luck to rub the turtle’s head and then it’s tail.
There was nothing very interesting about this site. The best part was the diagram of the entire area showing where were were, and also showing where the actual tombs were. We were under the impression that we were going to see the tombs, one of which had been excavated in the past, but that was not the case. In retrospect, the tour was called “The Ming Tomb Sacred Way”, and I guess that is what it was, not the tombs themselves. Based on the map diagram, we could see that the tombs were very far away at the base of the mountains, and we could barely see any mountains in the haze from there, it had to be several miles to them. All we were doing was to walk down this long path and that was all there was to this tour. You could tell no one was that interested, everyone just sort of plodded along trying to get to the other end. We were all tired from all of the walking on the Great Wall this morning.
In the middle of the pathway was an exhibit inside a building with some pictures on a wall of the actual tombs, but I was already past it when our guide told us what was inside of the building through our audio guides, and I was not going to walk back. Stephane did not go into the building either, she was looking at some other things in the gift store outside.
We all walked to the end, some of us arriving before the other people who were a little mobility-limited and were walking much slower. Michael, our guide, was telling everyone over the audio set to go to the left after we exited the gate, and that our bus was there waiting. He was in the rear with some of the people who were walking slower than everyone else. There was no bus to the left, only a street leading to another cross street, so we just stayed put until Michael finally arrived. He jogged down to the end of the street and came back. Apparently, our bus was parked to the left at the end of the first street, we just couldn’t see it from the exit.
Good, more walking. We finally arrived at the bus and everyone got on. In our small group in the back of the bus, everyone had thought that this was a terrible excursion, more of a time filler, there was really nothing there to see, and the name of the tour was very misleading, there were no tombs to see here as everyone had expected.
We drove back to the hotel. It took about 45 minutes to get through all of the Beijing traffic.
We were on our own for dinner tonight, some people were heading to a Viking arranged Peking Duck Dinner, which was an additional cost excursion, so the people not going to the dinner had to go elsewhere to eat tonight. We did not want to eat at the buffet in the hotel again, it was too expensive at $50.00 per person for the quality of the food served.
We went to the Ole grocery after we got back to the hotel and just bought some more bagels and cream cheese, we were still full from the large lunch we had eaten earlier, and we did not feel up to trying to figure out somewhere different to eat in the mall, it was sort of difficult. Of course, we got a few more cold beers and drank them in the room while relaxing and enjoying watching the chaos of the intersection we could see from our window. It was nice to have a small refrigerator in the room to keep the beer cold
We also took advantage of our large tub, each enjoying a long soak in the hot water to relieve some of the muscle aches in our legs from all of the walking we had done over the past several days.
This was also our last night here in Beijing, we travel to Shanghai tomorrow to embark on the Viking Yi Dun cruise ship, so we needed to do some packing, putting our suitcases back in order after having been here for six nights. That included putting all of our dirty clothes on one side of one of our suitcases to keep them separate from the clean clothes. We know we will be doing laundry tomorrow when we get on the ship, we had already planned on that before we left home.
We needed to have the suitcase packing completed tonight, they had requested that we place our checked luggage outside of the room by 10:30 PM.
We headed to bed at about 10:00 PM, we have a fairly early departure tomorrow from the hotel, and we are scheduled to meet in the lobby tomorrow morning at 7:30 AM to head to the PEK Airport for our flight to Shanghai.
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