I went to the Great Wall of China yesterday. Let me tell you something. It was great. And it was in China. And it was a wall. I just had to check out this "of" business, and then it was go time.

Turns out it was all legit. This Great Wall was a pretty sweet wall. The only problem was I decided to hike up to the bastard.

I went with this hiking group, Beijing Hikers, and I would never do it any differently. But. Next time I will remember to bring my hiking shoes. The last thing I saw when I left my apartment were those shoes, and I was like, "Eh, I'm not doing any hiking in China, right? Fuck it."

This was half way up. HALF WAY!



So on their site, for this hike I did, it said, "Can you climb up three flights of stairs without getting winded?" Which I was all, "Hells yeah! Maybe!" But it should have said, "CAN YOU CLIMB UP THE SIDE OF A FUCKING MOUNTAIN!?!?!?"

Because then, I would have said "Hells yeah! Maybe! But maybe not, too!"

So it was rough. They also said it would be chilly, so bring layers! Everyone was disrobing about five minutes in. It was around fifty degrees. And I am not sure what the translation is to Celsius, but I think fifty Fahrenheit is like 400 Celsius. Again, I'm not sure, but it was warmer than I expected.

One thing that was annoying was that it has been sunny the entire time I've been in Beijing. Which is not expected. You see, Beijing is almost always covered in soot, and haze, and poo, and ash, and whatever pollution you can think of. Somehow, I hadn't experienced that (too much). Of course, I wake up yesterday, open the curtains, and there's the soot, haze, poo, ash, etc.

So that was a bummer, because the visibility was crappy. And all of the photos look cloudy and bright.

All that aside, it was amazing. If the world ends in 2012, I'll be happy I saw the Great Wall of China. We hiked a part of the wall that has not been all fancied up by China, which was cool. Not one person tried to sell me a postcard or a DVD (that's because we didn't see anyone else the entire way).






I only asked someone to take a photo of me once. And I made the mistake of not looking at it after. I call this my "Hey, who farted on the Great Wall?" face.



This was on the way down. You can see where we climbed up to in the background. Nice job, China.