Lady’s Guide to Visiting the Great Wall of China

After exploring the Forbidden City, my friend and I continued our one day in Beijing by traveling to another top sightseeing destination: the Great Wall. Visiting the Great Wall of China had long been on my travel bucket list, and I couldn’t wait to see it up close.

Visiting the Great Wall of China

Our visit to the Great Wall of China took place in the Mutianyu area. The taxi driver we’d hired in Beijing dropped us off at the entrance and we got out excited to explore.

The first thing we did was look up. High on top of a green forested mountain, the white wall stood out like an exoskeleton.

I’d never imagined it was at such altitude. It was hard to believe enemy invaders actually climbed to such great heights.

Not being enemy invaders, my friend and I decided to take the gondola up the mountain instead of climbing. The orange car ascended slowly through the hot, humid air to the ridge at the top.

When we arrived, we stood for a minute imagining views of Beijing through the smog. Then we started visiting the Great Wall of China.

We climbed a short, steep set of stairs to get to the even steeper slopes of the wall itself. The path was full of dramatic drops and acute ascents in both directions.

14th-century watchtowers stood silently along the way, providing shade and vista points. We explored for as long as the humidity would let us.

Beijing

When we couldn’t convince our feet to climb another step in the turgid heat, we left the Great Wall of China and headed back to Beijing to get ready for dinner.

The rest of our group was staying at Shangri-La’s China World Hotel, and we met them at the Summer Palace restaurant there for dinner.

Due to the size of our party, the dinner took place in the restaurant’s private dining room. Sitting at a huge round table, we spent several hours enjoying a meal of endless portions of fish, meat, poultry, seafood, rice, and vegetables.

I hadn’t heard great things about Beijing’s food before I left London, but the dinner wasn’t bad at all. During the meal we told our friends all about our time visiting the Great Wall of China.

After dinner we retired to the China World Hotel cigar bar to watch Germany beat Argentina 4-0 in a soccer game. Two members of our group were German, which made the win exciting.

Visiting the Great Wall of China and Beyond

The next morning we were up at 6am to travel to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. After a late night, all of us were surprised our entire group of 18 made it to the airport and onto the plane without any problems.

As with our experience visiting the Great Wall of China, we took it as a good sign of things to come. To be continued…

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