The Great Wall of China

Andi and I have been in Beijing since this past Monday and we will stay here for a little over a week. Beijing is a huge city with many, many tourists spots to check out. There are also a shitload of foreigners here! For every 100 Chinese people I see, the next person will be a foreigner. The total population for Beijing is said to be around 20 million people. We have a long list of places we want to go and have been knocking out several of them a day. Our first spot to check out was the Great Wall. The main spot to start is a location called Badaling. It's about 50 miles outside of the city and the main place to go to see the Great Wall from Beijing.

The entrance to the Great Wall at Badaling. This section of the Great Wall had many soldiers guarding it because it was so close to China's capital, Beijing.

The mighty iron doors that would bar the way to intruders.

Just outside of the entrance there are several stone carvings of people working on the wall, emperors overseeing the work, etc.

An old part of a battle ax that was next to the stone carvings.

There were two directions that we could go; north which was longer but not as steep and had the most amount of people or south which was steeper but fewer people. We started north. 

The Great Wall was built with stones and rocks from around the surrounding hills.

Andi outside of one of the stone watchtowers. These were built along the wall and at all of the higher spots for lookouts. In ancient times, soldiers would alert everyone that an enemy was near by lighting a fire made from wolf poop and whatever else they could find. It became known as "Wolf Smoke."

Some sections of the Great Wall are closed off to tourists.

Once we got to the top of the north section, I decided I wanted to climb the south side as well. We hiked back down the way we came and then I headed to the watchtower with the red circle.

The funny thing was the south side had NO Chinese people at all!! For some reason, only foreigners come this way!

It was damn steep!

Andi and I on the wall!