This is a shot of one of the many bears at the entrance to the Great Wall. There are bowls of apple slices on the wall that you can buy for to throw to them. This one was getting fed by a group of people. There are about 8 or 9 bears in this open air pen.






This is a shot of me about halfway up to the high point we can walk to. It doesn't look bad but the stairs are very unevenly laid (one might be 6 inches high and the next 18 inches high) and there are stretches where it feels like a 45 degree incline or more where you feel like your nose is going to hit the ground because you are about parallel with it because of the slant. We paid the 10 bucks or so to ride the single car lifts up and bypass the bottom part. Best 10 bucks I have spent in a long time!!!

A shot of the wall and how intricate it is in places. Sometimes to go up, you have to go down some of these square buildings. Some of the openings can only accommodate one person and some were so tight and low that paul and I had to squeeze though. I can't tell you how many chinese people I literally "ran into" or "ran into" me.



Another shot of the wall and how long just the part we are on is. This is just about 1/4 of the way for us (and the most level). Just packed with people. We did pick the closest place to visit the Great Wall from Beijing because we opted to not do the 50 dollar tour and just take a dollar fifty bus on our own. For that reason, we were told it was one of the busiest parts of the wall. Worked out pretty well. We paid a dollar fifty for a 1 hour bus ride to the wall. Not Bad.


This is a shot of one of the many mirrors on the car ride to the middle. I took a picture to catch myself in the reflection. Paul is in the car behind. It felt like it was a carnival ride and that we were going to ride it like a roller coaster, but we didn't go over any cliffs. We rode them back down as well with the cars all bunched up together and the lead car had a worker who was braking all the way down to slow us from going too fast. After all that walking and climbing, even going down was difficult in places and on the calves.

Tomorrow we are going to try to see Tienanmen and Forbidden City, maybe more. I'm ready to start winding down and start heading home!!!!