Hey Lady! The Great Wall and other adventures

Angela, our tour guide from the Forbidden City, and her driver picked us up at the hotel. We're on our way to the Great Wall! It's drizzling a little, but they are optimistic that it won't be raining at the great wall. Unfortunately, they are wrong. When we arrive at the Mutianyu section of the Great Wall, its raining cats and dogs (Angela's favorite expression.)

But we're not discouraged and off we go. Up a hill to buy ticket... in the rain... to ride the cable car up to the top. At this point, its raining lots of cats and dogs. And cats are dogs are sitting on the plastic covers over the vendors. They keep pushing the rain off their tarps with poles, pouring the water down on us.

We're soaked before we start, Patti has a sore throat, BUT WE PRESS ON.

Of course, what they didn't tell us was that we had to climb a steep, long hill and then  6 flights of stairs to get to the cable car. This is not Disneyland. And for some reason during this trek, Angela and Barbara are singing Moon River. Angela probably doesn't even know what the words mean, but they're singing away. We wanted to moon their river.

Finally we get into the cable car and head up the mountain. But we're so damp inside the cable car, and it's raining so hard outside the cable car, that we can't see a thing. We hope it's taking us up to the Great Wall.

And then we arrive. We started up the steep, uneven, wet steps. No handrails, no slip guards, just uneven slippery rocks. But it is absolutely incredibly amazing. We're standing on the Great Wall. Wow.

There are surprising number of other tourists, considering the weather, and that we aren't at the most popular area of the Wall. We walked along the wall with Angela -- she tells us about the wall and the history and how the drainage channels only drain on the China side because water means prosperity. And there was plenty of prosperity that day.

We reached the first parapet and walked around the rooms where the soldiers stayed - along with a whole bunch of other folks dripping with cats and dogs... and prosperity. We were one prosperous bunch. Actually, it was beautiful. Clouds were moving moving across the mountain and the forest was bright green.

We wanted to keep hiking, but it was too wet and too steep and too miserable. And now, unknown to us, we had to run the "Hey Lady" gauntlet.  Isn't it amazing how they always take you back through the gift shop? Only this time, it was outdoors with a very narrow corridor, with very aggressive vendors all selling the same stuff. Not only would they "Hey Lady" you to death, they would follow you, grab your arm, and actually block you from moving forward.

We both bought stuff we didn't even want -- so look out y'all -- you might get China gifts you don't want. Angela finally had to rescue us from the Hey Lady people. We got back in the van with all our stuff. The next stop was lunch or so we thought. Angela decided we would wait and eat in Beijing, because she knew of a very nice restaurant near the Summer Palace, which was the second destination of the day. It's know 1:00 pm and Beijing is over an hour away.

Plus, Patti's sore throat is getting worse. Angela and the driver decide to stop at a Chinese pharmacy but it was hard to find one in these little villages. Especially because they don't look like pharmacies -- they look like cow stalls. But finally they found one and Leanne and Angela went in to buy medicine...  Chinheese medicine. Two products were purchased -- one looked like a fairly normal throat lozenge; the other like dried stool.

We eventually arrive back in Bejing, near the Summer Palace, and the driver and Angela are having a long discussion about where this restaurant is. Apparently, neither of them know and they finally give up. It's now 3:00 and we don't care whether its a nice restaurant. We just want a restaurant, and that's exactly what we got.

Its hard to describe this restaurant. It was packed full of people and it looked like a bad Mexican restaurant... a really bad Mexican restaurant. We were led into a "private dining room" - a small room off the kitchen with an incredibly slippery floor. Angela ordered food for us -- because we were beyond caring what was ordered. Actually, the food was very good.

We're exhausted but fortified and off we go to the Summer Palace. It has a giant lake, in the middle of Beijing, with a huge palace and several bridges. There are dragon boats and paddle boats. Its not raining anymore but we declined the hour-long boat ride and tour of the palace. We were just too tired and we had to get back for a concert.

We loaded up in the van for the last time, got back to the hotel and bid Angela goodbye, and collapsed into our room. And by now, Patti is sick. But not sick enough to drink tea made out of ground toadstools.

After resting for a while, we went to the China Night concert, a concert of of traditional Chinese music from the Tang dynasty. Apparently those folks didn't have much of a life, and we soon sank into a pentatonic, catatonic coma. We both fell asleep at least once.The concert was beautifully done, with original instruments and transcriptions, and gorgeous costumes, but at the of a long day, we need something more peppy. We were trudging back to our room when we heard a driving drum rhythm. There was a Chinese folk music concert starting outside. Yay! It was fun and lively and colorful and peppy - a nice way to to end the the day.