From Hadrians wall to The Great Wall of China, i did it for you Nanny! 🙂
So today i conquered The Great Wall of China, well the lazy mans Great Wall of China anyway. There was a small group of us that all wanted to do it so instead of schlepping all the way (over an hour from Beijing) by bus we shared a cab (700 Yuan each between 4 of us, not bad for a day out) and had a driver take us there and back. He took us to what is billed as the most “Family friendly” spot on the wall Badaling. Now i am by no means a “lets get muddy in the countryside and go camping” kind of girl, but being relatively fit, i’m partial to the odd strenuous walk/trek. This was a bit of a hike to be and there is no way that some of my family members would have enjoyed it. There were parts that were so steep small children were being tied up with scarves and dragged up as they had enough of the walking bless them! And i give full credit to the more mature ladies and gents that were making it up there and back, it was a serious effort at times. We all struggled at some point or another whether that be because of poor shoe choice, poor health, poor balance or just poor judgment!
The cable car took us up as that seemed to be the only way we could do it, and we started to make our way through the masses. For a supposedly quiet day, there were A LOT of people there, but then i supposed the definition of quiet is slightly different when you are nation of billions as opposed to my small island view. There was a lot of bustle from the old ladies and children as you would expect and some of the funniest posing i have seen yet. There were a lot of people who were extremely dressed up to be there, think wedges and suits etc to hike The Great Wall of China. This appears largely to be to allow for better poses as they make their way up, not poses with the wall though. Poses in the fancy outfits next to an obscure tree or non descript part of the wall where no one would have any idea where you were… I’m sure there is some logic there i’m just not seeing it yet!
The views as we made our way along the wall though were spectacular, just as i had got over one beautiful view and
Autumn is here in Badaling
scrambled up another hill there was another to take my breath away. The wall itself is awesome in its sheer scale, but the surrounding sights were a stunning mix autumnal shades. Trees speckled with tinges of ruby red, burnt orange and even crisp browns dotted around the summery greens in the late October sun. There was a chill in the air at times, we all had coats on and off constantly trying to manage our temperature! But the subtle changes in tone of the leaves in the surrounding landscape was a sight to behold
We were happily mooching along the wall taking all manner of pictures and avoiding bombing other peoples when i turn around to see one of the other guys from the train right behind me! Crazy coincidence in such a big place, so we all made our way back down together, shunning the cable car in favour of a leisurely stroll.
I have no idea how Lindsay managed to make it all that way after being poorly for the previous 24 hours, she did spectacularly well. But it was time to go back to the city for a disco nap before her birthday celebrations later that evening. I finally managed to hack the Great Firewall of China and upload a couple of things onto the blog etc. But that was soon put paid to. So i after munching on the random snacks that i had sourced (what can only describe as fish sausage, i’ll save that for another post!) I got ready and headed to meet everyone for dinner.
Simple task you would have thought, getting a cab to a well known restaurant. Oh no, not in Beijing, none of them wanted to take us. Even when we went back to my hotel to ask them to book one for us their Hailo stye app they weren’t having any of it. Beijing cab drivers are a funny breed, even with the combination of the English name, Chinese name and logo of the place they often won’t take you somewhere. The key is persistence, we managed to hail one eventually and made it only an hour late.
Sumptuous birthday feast at The Peking Duck
We dined at the very highly rated “Peking duck” which was close to where one of the guys was staying. My hopes dropped a little when we walked in and it was full of tourists, but despite that it was a really good meal. We all selected 2 dishes each accompanied with rice and noodles, which i took in with local beer on draught which was very refreshing. The dishes ranged from duck hearts, (delicious, tender and smooth), liver (rich, moist and velvety), crispy beef (succulent and far more tasty than any i have had in Europe) sizzling pork (not a sickly orange sauce in sight!) garlic spinach with Cashews, Chinese style pigs in blankets which were divine and the ubiquitous Peking duck. Oh my, that was the best Peking duck i have ever tasted, it had a golden roasted skin on the outside and an extremely moist and juicy pink meat on the inside. With all the associated trimmings, it was sublime.
Not quite done in by the masses of dishes we were the last to leave the restaurant at 11pm ish. So we went down to see if
Ghost Street, Beijing in full flow
we could find the elusive “Ghost Street” that we had heard so much about. It sounded like a magical little Hutong, not unlike the one we had visited the night before. So we wandered up and down the street that we were sure it was off a team of 7 people this time. Giving up and thinking that we must be missing something we popped into a couple of shops to see if they knew where it was. “you’re on it” really? are you sure? but this looks like the Las Vegas of Beijing… Indeed, what was billed as a quaint little street was the strip illuminated by flashing neon lights that we had been “navigating” for the past 2 nights. Full of massive restaurants, karaoke bars and florists working late into the night. Not quite what we expected.
What a let down! There was a really funky looking jazz bar just down the road that we passed the night before we we popped down there instead. I selected a cocktail based on the horrific name, and we listened to a random selection of jazz although none of the records they had in there were actually jazz. Intruiging! Even more intruiging was when a large shaggy Dulux dog decided to join us for a couple of drinks. He was so excited to be in there we couldn’t sit down and was running about all over the place, we thought there were 2 of him to start with he was running about so much. He soon became the focus of all attention and the ladies in the Jazz bar were loving all the translated google chatter. I’m not sure that he even belonged to any of them, as he was christened buddy after one person beckoned “come here buddy”. A random end to a very funny evening!
It would be fair to say that today has been an epic day. Ready for nod now!
A very happy cake lady x x
