13 days in China - part 2: Beijing and The Great Wall

After leaving Xi'an I had another overnight train trip and went to Beijing. On the first day there I went to see the Forbidden City and just walked around town for a bit. After that I was simply fed up with seeing tourists (as all the places I had visited so far on my trip were PACKED with them), so I decided to avoid them as much as possible for the rest of my stay. Which was a great decision, cause I was really able to relax and still saw quite a bit of the inner city.

Beijing

The next day I had booked a tour see the Great Wall. I went to one of the parts further away, 3 hours in a small bus, but it was definitely worth it. The tour offered a 4.5h hike on the wall from Jinshanling to Simatai which covered about 10 kilometers. It was great. There were only 2 more groups with buses there and they stuck together, so I could easily manage to walk ahead of them enjoy the peace. You'll see on the pics. Oh, and about the pictures, well I went totally picture-crazy and took 170 pictures of which I still have 111 on my computer. So I really had a hard time selecting the best ones and I still put 17 online, sorry about that (after all, it's just a wall.....).

The Great Wall

My last day in Beijing in started with a free TaiChi lesson in the morning and then took a relaxing bike ride through the city (which lasted all day).
And on Saturday I had to take the train back to Hong Kong, no, not just overnight, the things take more than a day!! 25hours to be exact. But it was quite a bit cheaper than a flight. And I got to read a whole book and sleep quite a bit.
So, that was it about China, at the moment I'm busy with the last part of my internship and in about 10 days I'll be heading back to Amsterdam to finish off my studies (July). More news will be up soon I guess.

M