Hi friends! I wanted to write a small blog to share all of my pictures from the Great Wall and Tiananmen Square. I hiked the Great Wall on Wednesday, and I visited Tiananmen on Thursday.

My program arranged a trip to the Great Wall earlier in the semester. This trip went to a more rural section of the Great Wall that isn’t as developed, thus being a more strenuous and serious hike. I knew I wouldn’t really have the ability to do that sort of hike, so I didn’t end up going. I felt kind of sad because I knew I was missing out on visiting one of the Seven Wonders of the World, but I figured I’d just make sure to see it if I ever came back to Beijing. However, one of my friends who also didn’t go on the program-arranged trip invited me to go with her and her parents who are visiting Beijing. Not only was it a really nice offer but I also wanted to see the Great Wall and experience it firsthand, so of course I said yes!

The tour was put on by a company that takes visitors to the Great Wall every day. This tour specifically goes to 慕田峪 (mu tian yu), one of the most popular and well-restored sections of the Great Wall. This section is specifically advertised as suitable for elderly people and children, as the cable car and toboggan system for getting up and down the Wall are well developed. That did not by any means make the hike easier, though. We woke up at 5:30 A.M. to get ready and have enough time to grab breakfast at the restaurant near our dorm before we had to set out on the subway. We had about an hour-long subway ride to the departure point, where a bus then picked us up and drove us about an hour and half to the general entrance to the Great Wall. We got there by 9:30 A.M., and then our larger tour group split up from there. People had personal freedom to choose how they got up and down the Great Wall and how much of it they hiked. We decided to take the cable car up the Wall, where you then have the choice to hike up to around 2 miles of the wall.

Getting to the cable car was a hike in and of itself, though! I was beginning to break a sweat before we even got to the cable car. However, once we made it up a steep hill where you boarded, the view was beautiful, and I was even more excited to see the Wall.

Being on the Great Wall is like a dream. You see it in pictures, but they can’t fully portray what it’s really like to be on the Wall. These days, the winding path is filled with people stopped to take pictures (I did my fair share of this, too!). But you really have to just take in the scenery surrounding the Wall. We came at the best time, since the leaves are just starting to change in this area. The mountains go on for miles, and the sun shines so bright.

The steps are built quite unevenly, so it’s a lot of work weaving your way through the Wall. The hardest part of hiking the Wall is definitely the sharp inclines and declines, since there isn’t much to support you either way. At times, they can feel like almost 90-degree declines.

I ended up hiking about half of the section we went to. My friend’s dad and I both decided to stop at a lookout point and relax while my friend and her mother continued to hike the rest of the way. I knew stopping there would be best for my knees, and my friend’s dad has some knee problems as well. We chatted, refueled, and re-hydrated with the water and snacks we brought. It was really nice, especially because we were able to truly take in our surroundings from where we were.

While I was tired in general from having left so early, I was glad that we set out the time we did, because by the time we were hiking back down the Great Wall, there was a considerable amount of people there, much more than when we started. Also given that we visited the Wall on a weekday, there comparably weren’t that many people.

Calves burning and quads quivering, we made our way back down to the commercial area before the Wall. There, they had a couple restaurants, including a Subway and a Baskin Robbins where we had lunch (crazy, right?). It actually tasted pretty good, but that might just be because of how tired and hungry I was!

On Thursday, even though I was still recovering from the hike, we decided to go to Tiananmen. Objectively, this was probably the best time to go since the weather was cold and rainy, meaning less people. There were still a lot of people there, which surprised me. We couldn’t make it into the Forbidden City, since you have to book your tickets a few days in advance, but I hope we can go back sometime.

The area surrounding Tiananmen Square is very pretty and open. The square itself is surrounded by flower beds and numerous security guards. The building is huge in person, and I never would have imagined just how big Mao Zedong’s portrait would be.

Being able to experience Tiananmen was also very amazing, but it’s not a place where you spend much time due to how many people there are and the lack of things to do besides take pictures. So after we admired the building a bit longer and finished up taking our pictures, we set out to go find our friends who had been in the area earlier but were now in a shopping center near Tiananmen.

The shopping center was not as close as we thought it was—we ended up walking for about forty-five minutes. On the way there, though, we stopped in a nice park, and went into Hamleys, a Western toy store.

Having walked so far, we all had worked up a mighty appetite. We decided on a Thai food restaurant in the mall, which was some of the best food I’ve had in Beijing so far! We ordered spring rolls and pork neck with pineapple to start, and our main dishes were shrimp pad thai and a chicken and shrimp dish in a sweet sauce with pineapple. Oh yeah, and rice, of course!

After our stomachs were full, we could begin to fill our other appetite: shopping! The mall was pretty big, it had six floors total. It had a lot of popular Western brands, but my favorite section of the mall was the claw machine aisle. An entire section of one floor was dedicated to them! One of my friends was even nice enough to help me win something I wanted.

After we shopped, we met back up with our friends for ice cream. By this point it was getting late, so some of us decided to head back to campus to grab dinner at the convenience store and settle in for the night. It was really fun being in this area of Beijing, though, because it reminded me a lot of U.S. cities and nightlife!

At the end of the day I had ended up walking nearly 20,000 steps. I finally took some time to relax in my room and chat with my roommate over a pomelo, one of my favorite fruits here. My legs are still sore while I’m writing this! But overall, I’m really grateful for these experiences. It’s unbelievable seeing these landmarks in person.