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Craig & Jills Round the World Trip
Thursday we went to a section of the great wall of china. Once again it was packed full of tourists but it didnt spoil the experience, it felt surreal to be there. We werent expecting the walk along the wall to be such hard work, it literally went up the side of the hill in front of us, hundreds of steps. As we made our way up we would come to several lookout towers. As we stopped here for a rest you could look back down and see how far you had climbed. Luckily the further we climbed the less people there was. It also made you wonder how on earth they built the thing, seen as we were out of breath just walking up it! After an hours climbing up we turned round and headed back down, which was a lot easier. The weather was quite cloudy so unfortunetly the views across the mountians wernt as clear, but you could still make out the line of the wall disappearing into the distance. We did the tourist bit and bought a medal as reward for our climb.
Next we went for a walk around the summer palace, gradens, a huge lake and a long corridor. The covered walkway has 8000 differnet paintings on it, all very detailed. Most of the tourists come here for a ride on the peddle boats on the lake.
On route we also got taken to numerous tourist spots, which has made us appreciate how much we have enjoyed travelling independently for so long! We got taken to a jade factory and then a pearl factory, but at least here we got a free pearl fresh from an oyster we picked.
In the evening we went out and explored ourself and went to Qianmen, which is a very traditonal area. It was full of narrow streets packed full of markets, tiny noodle shops, and duboius street vendors selling dodgy food including chicken heads and feet, see dad you think you get short straw having to eat the leg!
On Friday morning we went back to tiananmen square to get a view from up in the gate tower. From here you can really see the scale of the square. Final stop was a silk market, several floors of bargains and quality copy clothes, however bags are already bursting and wallet is very empty so just window shopping.
In the afternoon we flew to Xian, home of the terracotta army.
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