Matt and Ashley Faus

We landed in Beijing, where we met our RoadTrips guides. They picked us up in a charter bus… and we had the whole bus to ourselves!

We went up to the Great Wall one day, and it was a workout! The Great Wall is MASSIVE, and it has really steep steps at several different spots. Two humorous observations: they play “mood music”, and the wall is only about 12 feet tall. They had hidden speakers among the trees, which played traditional Chinese music as tourists hiked the wall. At several points, you could see the Wall all the way into the horizon, with guard towers along the way. It was really cool to stand there and think about how many people worked on the Wall. Of course, we had to shop at the base of the entrance. The salespeople were really pushy… LITERALLY, pushy. One lady shoved Matt into her store!! We also found some great Olympic items. We had a traditional Chinese lunch at The Commune by the Great Wall before heading back to the hotel.

We also visited Tian’men Square and the Forbidden City. The architecture in these areas is really old. We also learned about the Chinese Happy Knot, which brings good luck. We saw several Happy Knots during our time in Beijing. The Forbidden City is also HUGE. The Emperor had thousands of people build his palaces, and he had large, empty courtyards to help protect against intruders. We took some really cool pictures.

Overall, Beijing is a cool city. Matt and I felt like we would prefer to see the city after the Olympics. They had taken pretty extreme measures to put on a good show, so we would like to find out how the city REALLY feels.

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