Back in time to sunday august 20th - A very good wall

Our travel group standing in the parking lot of one of the great wonders of the world. The wall is behind us on the mountain.




I realize that this post is out of order, and many of you (grandparents) just want to see more baby pictures. However, think of this blog as one of those very sophisticated independent films where each scene is out of order and you don't really know where the story begins until the end of the movie. This blog is like that

I learned a very important lesson about parenthood before meeting miss Libby. that is, parents don't really get to be sick, you may get a few hours of rest if you are very very lucky, otherwise you have to do it like the football pros - get your shot and back in the game. Our trip has been a little like that. After spending Saturday the 19th in bed with a MASSIVE and very painful sinus infection (did I mention I had a FEVER!) I get one day of rest (ONE DAY, OY) and then it's BACK ON THE BUS. I suppose I could have stayed in the hotel room and missed the great wall - but since my fever broke over the night I felt obligated to get back on the bus for more whirlwhind touring. At this point, we had all day Sunday to tour (and by all day I mean about 9AM to 10PM - now THATS touring).

We started out at the great wall. It is a pretty amazing sight but I do have two observations. First, you can only see part of the wall at a time, so it's difficult to imagine the scale of this 3000 mile wall from the local tourist checkpoint where you only see a small portion. Second, importantly, the stairs leading up to the top of the section we visited were very run down. Our guide said something about being built a couple thousand years ago...yada yada....as we climbed the broken and uneven stairs up to the top I kept thinking that maybe we should call it the Very Good Wall. A Great wall would probably have handicap access, and more up to date stairs....maybe an elevator to the top of this section would have been good. We climbed up to the third guard post you see from the picture, it took more than 45 minutes and frankly hurt a little, that's a HELL OF A LOT OF STAIRS!

Seriously, it was a good feeling to be standing on the great wall of china. I felt very priveledged at that moment when I realized that despite the thousands of tourists that visit each year, my guess is most people on earth don't get to stand on this monolith. It was also a good feeling, when Kris and I stood on this wall, to think about what an amazing achievement of Chinese ingenuity this wall is. It makes me very proud of my daughters chinese heritage and in a way I feel connected to this country, it's people, and even it's achievements in a way that is difficult to describe.

After the great wall, we went for some famous Peking duck. Of course Beijing (formerly Peking) is where it was invented, and since you know how I love my duck.......of course this was not to be missed.

The view from the bottom looking up. It's a long climb. Seriously.



Wearing Ashen Relic T-shirts on the great wall - Ashen Relic is Ryan's (on the left) band.