The Great Wall

I mentioned early this week that I had become a big fan of a website call seat61.com.  It is full of great information on traveling by train, which is the popular thing to do in China.  My most immediate piece of useful information was that there is a train to the Great Wall at Badaling.  After reading the posting on it I was committed to going the coming weekend.  This was perfect.  It was going to be a piece of cake and I could check of climbing the Great Wall before I hit the big 30. 

I tend to be an optimist, which is a good thing but it does have some downsides.  Most presently that was displayed when my piece of cake train ride took place in a city of 25 million people.  First it took two hours to get to the train station.  I'm not sure why or how as it normally only takes an hour which is a very short amount of time when dealing with public transportation in the suburbs of Beijing.  Then the train that it supposed to run every half hour wasn't leaving for an hour an fifteen minutes and so we got to spend it with a few hundred new friends who had already lined up for the train and a can of lays and a coke zero (my diet mountain dew replacement of choice).

Now when you are getting on a train in China you'll see a track meet break out as soon as people are released onto the platform when there are not assigned seats.  We had no intention of joining this chaos so we grabbed a stand up table in the beverage car.  According to my memory of what I read we had a seventeen minute ride and we'd be at the Wall.  So we were bit behind my imagined schedule but we were going to be at the Wall soon, so it's all good.  An hour and forty minutes later the train comes to a stop at our station.  At one point we stopped at an empty station then went in reverse (I think down a different section of track) for about ten minutes to get to the station.

I'm going to be a much more patient person in the future.  That is also a good thing.  Public transportation can be a hassle and we spent about 2 or 3 hours at the Wall and at least double that getting there but it was all worth it.  An incredible place and I will be returning so I can see more of it.  We also got spend a few minutes with a group of about ten British ladies at the Great Wall  Bar which was hilarious.  The pictures tell the story much better than I can so I hope you enjoy them.

Have a great Sunday.
Ryan