THE WALL

All four of us can now say we have officially climbed the Great Wall. And climb we did. There were two sections to the wall where we were today: the steep climb and the moderate climb. Kayla joined a couple other families from our travel group and climbed the steep part. She made it past the three tower and nearly to the fourth, and it was an impressive climb. Good job Kay! Dan and I used Rachael as an excuse to climb the moderate part. In the oppressive heat and humidity, it was plenty steep for us old folks. Rachael was a real trooper climbing a good bit of the way by herself. The steps are very uneven and some of them she literally had to climb, not step up. We rewarded both girls with ice cream and t-shirts after the climb. This section is located in lush green mountains and the views were simply beautiful!!

After leaving the wall, we ate lunch in a Friendship Store, a government run craft shop. There was a demonstration of cloisonné, which is a pretty cool process where copper wire is shaped, hammered onto copper urns/vases/etc. and then enameled, baked, and enameled some more. The resulting product is quite beautiful, and it was impressive to observe the process of creating this art. Naturally, there were plenty of opportunities to separate us from cash for some of these trinkets, but we mostly resisted.

Lunch was pretty interesting, and we again had the same dishes as two years ago, including the inside-out carp that was fried like a blooming onion (and tasted really good). Dan opted for something more adventuresome, so went with Susan, our guide, to the driver and guide lunch room. He got 8-10 interesting traditional Chinese dishes that were more exotic, and some of them quite tasty, particularly the noodles. The rest of us weren't as brave (pronounced "cra-zy"), but still had some pretty good food.