A Really Pretty Good Wall

This past weekend we went to the Great Wall of China.

Pretty cool, huh?

Now, most people probably realize that since the Great Wall was built for the defense of China, it generally follows the tops of mountain ridges and other high ground. What you may not realize is what th means in terms of actually getting to the Wall. Because in China, they don't make you hike up a mountain--no, they make you take the stairs. The really old, uneven, stone stairs. And there's a lot of them.

Let me put this in perspective. From the Great Wall, we could see the little tourist town we started from. Look there, to the right...

So up the stairs we went.

As we climbed, we discovered a bunch of very interesting facts about China. Like the fact that the Chinese authorities prohibit fire if fire-forbidden areas. Huh. Imagine that.

And on we climbed...

We then discovered that in China, money does grow on trees. Quite peculiar.

And we met a couple of tourists who thought it would be cool to get their pictures taken with some random American folks. we thought it would be cool, too.

And then, finally, we reached the Great Wall of China. You have no idea how much of a relief it was to our aching muscles, at that point.

At the Wall we met a little girl who wanted a picture of us cool Americans at the Great Wall. The moment was too cute to pass up.

She must have been studying American customs in school, because after the pictures she very politely said "thank you" in English and shook our hands. It was very sweet.

After the pictures we took a moment to appreciate the view from the Wall. This is what we saw...

After standing around for a bit, congratulating ourselves for actually getting there. We began the relatively short, but very exciting, walk along the Great Wall to the gondolas that would ferry us back down. Because we were in no way even considering walking back down that ridiculous flight of stairs.

We walked up narrow walkways, and across wide ones...

We saw guard towers,

And we walked into them...

went over to the window...

and looked out.

Then we walked out the other side of the guard tower.

We saw some amazing things:

 And some really awesome views.

Then, at the end, we stopped to rest...

Before taking the gondola back down.