February 22, 2009
What an experience. I have been to some places in the world though my travels with Expeditors, but The Great Wall was by far one of the best. It is one of the 7 wonders of the world. I visited the wall with Susan DeGozzaldi, a friend and co-worker who is living in Singapore today. It looks cold doesn’t it? It was a beautiful day and with all the climbing (that’s the start of the path to the wall on the right) and hiking it was pretty warm.
There are three locations where you can access the wall and where they have kept the wall repaired for people to see. There’s a lot of the wall that has fallen into disrepair over the years. The section we visited was Mutianyu (a section located in Huairou County 70 km northeast of Beijing).
So... we were up on the wall for about 2 1/2 hours walking, resting, taking pictures and wondering about how it was made so many years ago (it was started in about 220 BC and they didn’t stop adding to it until the 1400s.
On the way down we had to walk through a gauntlet of souvenir shops so I figured I had to get a t-shirt. The lady I started bargaining with started at 285 RMB (approximately $35 USD). I got her down to 60 RMB and thought I had done pretty well. I got a nice t-shirt for $7 after all. Several shops later I was offered the same t-shirt for 1 RMB! I guess location is everything.
No comments:
Post a Comment