On October 6 I went to the Jinshanling section of the Great Wall with a bus bull of backpackers who'd booked the trip through our various hostels. It was a 3-hour drive each way to this less-trafficked section of the wall. We walked from there to the Simatai site, 10 km away. It was great to breathe fresh air again and see the wall, and it was a perfect sunny day. But it was another essentially unsurprising activity.Back in Beijing I collected my backpack from the hostel and headed to the train station. I'd booked a ticket through my hostel, and only "hard seat" class spots were still available--the hostel worker explained that this was because people were returning home after the October 1 holiday week. When I'd read about hard seat in books about China I'd pictured a bench, but these were actually lightly-padded seats with non-reclining backs. I fell asleep almost immediately, and slept for much of the 12-hour trip, but woke up with quite a sore neck.
2 comments:
I guess that the wall is still worth seeing though? And the warriors look awesome too. But I can understand that you'd be familiar with both of them, whereas other things in China would have constantly surprised you. Are we close to the beginning of your trip yet?
Yes, it's definitely worth seeing. I mean, what would your friends think if you went to China and didn't see the Great Wall? ;) I recommend what I did--going to a less-visited section and hiking. I don't know how I would have felt about the really crowded part.
I'm nearing the magic day when my plane touched down in Beijing, yes. Soon I can go back to blogging intermittently about recent happenings!
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