China pics, the pretty stuff

Aloha everyone, here’s a long post with lots of China pics. Sorry it’s long, but have to catch up from being offline. We had a good 9 hour flight from Frankfrut to Beijing nonstop on Air China. Got some sleep, and each seat has it’s own personal entertainment system with games, movies, etc.. Got to Beijing, and wow, it’s a HUGE city. Also, the smog there is so terrible, it makes L.A. look like pristine mountain top air. 🙂 Not a joke, if you looked at a building across the street, it was hazy, like walking around in fog. yuck. Had fun, and here are the pics.

Got on a day trip tour that took us to the Great Wall at the Mutianyu location. It was about 1.5 hours from Beijing. It’s way less crowded, so was worth the extra time. Had to take a ski lift up the mountain to get to the top.

We made it! So cool to be standing on the Great Wall of China. 🙂

Cool view, the wall goes along the mountain top ridgeline. It’s just amazing to think how the heck they built this!?!?!?

When they say you “Climb the Great Wall”, they mean it. Looking down one of the steep slopes we’d climbed up, down on another couple from our tour.

Here’s what an un-repaired section of the wall looks like. Still standing, but overgrown, and damaged from time and weather.

Shawn on top of one of the wall’s lookout towers. I’m a bit down the wall, looking down on him.

We took the ski lift up the mountain, than got to take an awesome toboggan run down the mountain! Weeeeeeeeeeee 🙂

Coming back, got had to wait for this truck to get un-stuck. It’d tried to go under a bridge that was too low for it’s load. You can see one of the bags on the street.