We didnt slept many hours before our phone started to ring and our guide told us that she was waiting in the lobby and it was time to go exploring. Our first goal was the great wall of China which I think is a must do when you are in China for the first time. Im not sure what to say about it though, I mean after all its just a long, really long wall, its pretty high but what impress me the most is that its built without any modern machines and they where smart and used the nature so its built on top of ridges. It is for sure impressive but at the same time, its just a wall. I really recommend you to go here and see it but at the same time I have to quote Karl Pilkington from A idiot abroad; “I’ll decide if it’s great or not. It might end up being the ‘All Right Wall of China’ to me.” . However I can now check another of the wonders of the world but I cant shake the feeling that you go here, you look, and you leave.
Straight after we visited the wall we decided to head over to the tombs of Ming Dynasty. And once we got there we realized that it was closed for restoration, bummer! We saw glimpse of it it and we could walk the holy imperial road but that was it. Maybe not what we expected but how interesting can a number of graves be?
Since we were living the tourist way of life we continued to visit a cloisonnes factory were we beside looking at how the actually made jade jewelery and art had an huge lunch containing 7 or 8 dishes. This was our first meal for the day and the hungover from yesterday finally started to disappear and we finally started to feel like humans again. The factory was pretty interesting but it was kind a tourist trap where they kind a forced you to buy stuff after you looked at they created then. The day continued with visiting the former Olympic village, the bird nest (the stadium) was actually more impressive than the great wall. We visited a proper tea house and we had some traditional Chinese massage. During the massage where were a “witch doctor” who looked into your hand and could tell your health. According to him we were dying and of course he had the cure for it if we had the dollars. Well, I knew it was a hard night yesterday but I don’t need expensive medicine to cure that, all I need is some more massage and some rest so we firmly said thank you but no thanks and run away.
