Day 72: March 16, 2013 The Wall is Pretty Great!

          So I wake up with still no roommate, which was a little concerning. Jess had said she was getting a cab home last I had talked to her, so when she wasn’t there in the morning I was a little worried. I hopped in the shower really quick and then tried to get a hold of her. Right as I was calling she walked in the door with just one of those looks on her face. She said for whatever reason they couldn’t get anyone to take them back here last night so her and this girl Tess just stayed in one of the other guy’s hotel rooms and she had been up since 5:30 so she could catch the subway all the way back. 

     Our tour included breakfast at the hostel so we went downstairs to get her some much needed fuel. Breakfast was actually really good; we got eggs, sausage, bacon, hash browns, toast, and coffee! We had ordered 8 of the breakfasts for the whole group and this random guy asked Jess and I if he could sit at our table so of course we said yes. He was kind of weird but we tried to make conversation so we asked where he was from because he clearly had an accent. He said New York, so we asked where he was originally from and he said Hawaii. We were pretty confused so we just that one go and changed the subject. They brought out another breakfast and he just snagged it and we made it very clear that it was one of our friends but he still continued to eat it, which was really awkward. Ron just ended up ordering another, so it all worked out but I’m pretty sure the guy never ended up paying for it and just walked out which was interesting. After we had all gotten our food, we walked down the street with our tour guide to get on a bus. We drove around town for about an hour picking other people up and then were on our way to The Wall.

     Once we got there our guide told us to meet back down by the bus at this restaurant with a Chinese flag for lunch at 1:30. He repeated it so many times we actually made a joke out of it the rest of the day acting like we didn’t know when or where to meet. He told us about the option to hike up to the top versus a cable car up and toboggan down and we decided to go with the latter since we didn’t have all that much time.

Cable car to Wall

      Once we got up to The Wall we decided to make our way to the right which was supposedly one of the cooler spots and then back the other way with the rest of our time. Unfortunately moving in a group of 8 really slowed us down so we didn’t cover much ground, but what we saw was pretty amazing. 

     Within the first couple of minutes we ran into a guy selling beer and snacks and told him we were from America. He freaked out and showed us all of the pins he had of the American Flag and such and then all of the sudden out of no where he grabbed me by my bun and just started whipping out some Kung Fu moves on me.  It was absolutely hilarious so naturally Bryan snapped some pictures and then Bryan and Nathan wanted to do the same. After we had all had our turn we told the guy that we knew the next few people walking up and to show them his Kung Fu. As soon as Tyler reaches the guy he just attacks and Tyler was so confused. He told him that he better watch out because he could just throw him right off The Wall. Luckily Bryan got the whole thing on video, which is actually pretty hilarious. A few of the guys bought beers to honor St. Patrick’s Day and then we continued on our way.

Kung Fu Man

     We made it all the way down to where the wall changes from restored to unrestored, which was pretty cool to see. Bryan actually managed to take a whole brick out of the wall and then we all decided it would be cool to get little pieces from the wall as souvenirs. We all got a group picture with the American flag that Nathan had brought and then had a difference of opinion of what we wanted to do. 

Unrestored Wall

     Bryan and I really wanted to make our way further down The Wall and coincidently his friend he was going to meet up with in Beijing happened to be on The Wall at the same time so we decided to go find her. We went ahead and started moving a little more quickly when we decided to stop and get our sunglasses out since it was turning out to be such a nice day. Right when Bryan got up from being bent over his bag he realized his friend had just walked by and we had almost missed her. They said hi and then introduced everyone .We talked with them for a while about their trip, which sounded pretty awesome. They had been traveling all over China for the last week for their spring break and it seemed like that had done a pretty good job of covering ground. 

      After we had been talking for a while the rest of our group caught up with us and chatted for a little as well. After not much longer we parted ways and continued along The Wall. We made sure to get in a couple good group pictures and one of Adam, Bryan, John, and I in our sunglasses AKA The Ray Ban Clan. 

The Ray Ban Clan

      After a little more walking we really didn’t have much time so we made our way back to where we started to wait in line for the toboggan down.  It took a while to get up to the front and it was looking like we were going to be late for lunch, so we called our tour guide to warn him and he said no worries. With that we were ready to go and strategically planned out our order by who wanted to go quickly and who didn’t. The toboggans were pretty simple and all you had to do was push forward on the lever to go faster and pull back to brake. Other than leaning into the turns there wasn’t really anything else you had to worry about. Once they let me go I picked up speed pretty quickly after the first turn and just started flying. The whole way down there were people with flags yelling at us, but since I don’t speak Chinese I just went ahead and assumed they were telling me to go faster, which was definitely not the case but there was nothing they could do. The ride down was awesome and by the time I got to the bottom tears were streaming back on my face I was going so fast. All very happy with our decision to take those down, we headed over to get some lunch.

     On the way we passed a bunch of souvenir shops and came across this shirt that, I kid you not, said I <3 BJ, which was supposed to mean I <3 Beijing but obviously that was not the first thing that came to mind. Adam couldn’t pass it up and got one and Bryan got a Great Wall shirt as well. Even after that, we ended up only being about 15 minutes late to lunch. We had a table to ourselves at first but then were joined by this guy and girl who were from Canada. Naturally we directed them towards Ron since he used to live there and he figured he might as well ask if he knew one of his friends who went to their college. Turns out they are actually really good friends with him and even a few of his other friends who don’t even go to their college; small world! We were all pretty blown away by that the rest of the meal but managed to change the topic and learn about how they were studying business in Hong Kong. They were really fun to talk to and lunch was great, so overall we were very pleased with the conclusion of our trip. After we all finished eating we made our way back to the bus for another 2-hour ride back to the hostel. 

      We were all pretty exhausted so we took it easy until it was time to make it to our reservations for Peking Duck at one of the most famous restaurants in Beijing called Da Dong.  It took us a little while to catch two cabs, but eventually we were there without a problem. We were seated right away, and instantly felt underdressed for the occasion considering how nice the atmosphere was. Some people were dressed a lot nicer than others so we didn’t feel too bad, but we were excited to be in such a nice place. We put in the order for 2 ducks and then Jess and I decided to split and order of eggplant while everyone else got a beer instead. After not much time at all, they had brought out two full ducks and two chefs started their intricate carving process. For how big the ducks looked, we didn’t really get all that much meat, but what we did get was absolutely delicious. We had these little condiment trays with all sorts of stuff like cucumbers, duck sauce, sugar, and garlic paste. Our waitress taught us how to make the little roll ups with the pancakes and it was pretty impressive how quickly and effortlessly she could do it all with chopsticks. She basically took some duck, dipped it in the sauce, put it on the pancake with some radishes and cucumbers, and then rolled it all up. She also showed us how to use the sesame buns where you basically did the same thing but added the garlic paste. She also told us that you are supposed to dip the skin in sugar, which was surprisingly really tasty. After we knew what to do we all dug in and the duck was gone in no time. Everyone thought it was amazing and said they could’ve probably eaten a whole duck to themselves. The eggplant we ordered also turned out to be really delicious and we were very satisfied with our meal. After we thought we were all done, they brought out some complimentary soups and then some water chestnuts on this intricate display with dry ice.

     After we were all finished with those, we got the check, some candies to go, and then a group picture out front. Since it wasn’t too late we decided to head over to Olympic Park since we heard it gets all lit up at night and is pretty cool. The subway there wasn’t too bad and we came up right in front of where we needed to be. We didn’t even have to pay and we got an up close view of The Bird’s Nest and The Cube, which looked pretty awesome at night. There were people flying kites all over the place, but there was this one guy whose kite was so long you couldn’t even see the end of it. He let us hold it, which was pretty fun and when we tried to leave he kept chasing us to try and get us to buy one. After we escaped we just walked around exploring until the lights started to shut off. We managed to get one last group picture in front of The Bird’s Nest and then hopped on the subway to make our way back home. By the time we got back to the hostel we were all pretty pooped so we decided to just take it easy and call it a night since we still had plenty to see in the morning.

Bird's Nest

Awesome kites!