Beijing, China and The Great Wall

The Beijing airport is gorgeous and huge!

Of course .... Chinese Food.

Elwood could not get over the bikes~ still in use

~ but he is sure they are from the early 50's

Taxi anyone?

Or enclosed...

Or rent your own.

On Thursday, we went to the Great Wall. This looks like the Great Wall

but it is a random wall inside Beijiing where we caught a bus

for a 1 hour ride 43 miles north of Beijing to Badaling,

a restored section of the Great Wall.

The Great Wall at Badaling.

We climbed to the highest peak you can barely see

- on the very left of this picture

We both were ready to walk the wall.

Another feature of China is we were stopped a lot to have our picture taken. I guess the blue eyes did it. We had not been in Beijing for 10 minutes when we were stopped for a picture with us. Elwood, looking like a true Swede, was stopped on the wall a lot! At other times, you could tell people were taking our picture without us supposedly knowing.

The wall is wide and very high.

Near one end of the wall, there were a lot of people.

I can only imagine what it is like in July or August!

At times it is very, very steep.

Sometimes with very uneven stairs, sometimes with a steep slope.

That is why they needed this sign.

Is this what it means?

Or this?

A rest break

We guessed they were Mongolians

A warning along the way

Maybe Erik didn't obey.

Their answer for potty training...Hmmmm...

A great day!

Back to Beijing and Wangfujing Street

complete with MacDonalds - Chinese style

More random loaded bikes.

A Random wall & tower in the middle of the city

~ near one of our subway stations

Friday we toured the Forbidden City.