Early in the morning around 7:30, our guide Chen, from topchina trip, met us at hotel lobby, and with driver take us to the Great Wall, Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City by a car.
The section of the Great Wall that we went to was called Mutianyu and was about an hour and half away from our hotel but apparently is known for being less crowded and touristy. We got to the wall around 9:00am and took a cable car to get to the top of one of the watch towers. We were practically the only people there, didn't have to wait in any lines or anything! We started at tower 14 and mom and I hiked up all the way to tower 20. That may not sound that far, but it was mainly an uphill/upstairs hike. I think our guide said it was something like 500+ steep steps from tower 19 to tower 20 . You have to take several breaks to make it all the way to the top because you are huffing and puffing the whole way. Once at the top you can look down at on the wall and it was such an amazing feeling that it is impossible to put into words. Mom wanted to keep on climbing, "unfortunately" you couldn't go any further than tower 20 because it is too dangerous.
After the Great Wall we went to a Chinese restaurant with our guide and driver. Next we went to Tiananmen Square, it is now mainly an area for tourists and is surrounded on the sides by various museums and the tomb of the famous Mao Zedong. The square stands in front of the Forbidden City, which was the Chinese imperial palace from the Ming Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty. It currently consists of 8707 rooms which were once used for various purposes that the Emperor needed. It is called "Forbidden" because no-one could enter or leave the palace without the emperor's permission. Our favorite part was the imperial garden which was dotted with various statues and temples.
Later that night, for the guide Chen taught me so much and the night market in Beijing, we decided to end up at the Pearl Market which is 5 floors full of pearls and other jewelry items, It was a bit overwhelming for us but fun at the same time to be surrounded by so many pearls! We then visited the neighborhood where our hotel is in. It is a really popular area for young people and there is a mall that has the worlds largest ADIDAS store. They had multiple big screen TV's set up showing the soccer game everywhere. We ate at a really fun place called Element Fresh where the ingrediants used all really did taste fresh and healthy. Unfortunately it started to rain on us so we had to call it a night.
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