China: Day 3 (Breakfast buffet, The Great Wall, Chinese dining, Summer Palace)

WOW! What a day…… we just got home (4:37 pm) and our day was full of sightseeing!
First, let me say that we have less than 48 hours till we get Tahlia!!!! Can you believe it, cause we can’t!!!! 🙂

You will see in our photo album that our day started in the wonderful breakfast buffet. I took pics of our “American breakfast, and our Chinese breakfast.”

We were then picked up at 8:30 to travel 1.5 hours to the country-side to climb the Great Wall. I can’t tell you how awesome it was to first lay eyes on this magnificent structure…surreal for sure!!! It was another COLD day, but once we got climbing we weren’t cold.
Thoughts about the wall:
1) IT IS VERY STEEP!! going up is a hard, and coming down is even harder (Brian doesn’t agree) because you feel like you could fall forward
2) there are many stops (watch towers) along the way that you climb…we made it to the second tower . We climbed for over an hour. We stopped to pick up stones from the wall to bring them home to the kids 🙂
3) You are panting heavy only minutes after starting. Its almost ALL steps! Crazy workout!
4) Couples who recently got married hang LOVE locks on the wall (took a pic)
5) the part of the wall that is in Beijing is 342 miles long
6)Many chinese stop to take our pics with them. There weren’t many foreigners on the wall….many were chinese tourists
7) Its very commercialized (the part we were at) souvenir shops and food shops
8) It was amazing in more ways then I can ever put into words…the pics will speak for themselves!

Next on the itinerary was our Chinese cuisine: We ate an authentic restaurant (The Golden Palace)in the country-side.
1) coke is so much sweeter in China and you get one small glass, no refills!! (poor Brian)
2) hot tea is always served, but it tasted like shampoo…LOL
3) we got three courses: soup/ meat and vegetables/ and oranges
4) our finger food (to start us out) was fried peanuts…so good!!!

Then, we visited the amazing Summer Palace
1) it covers 726 acres and contains the longest corridor in the world. It was so beautifully painted!!
2) I can NOT believe the detail that went into this palace that was originally built for the emperor’s mom
3) Its exquisite and unbelievably beautiful…I can only imagine how much more beautiful it is in the summer!
4) It took us two hours to walk through it, but we didn’t see it all.
5) Its on a lake that is in the shape of a bird because the bird symbolizes happiness

** EVERYTHING had meaning…even down to the tiniest detail of color, shape, material, number of things, painting stories….

I was on information overload with all that our guide shared with us. CHINA is amazing. The architecture, skill and talents really blow your mind!! My eyes were captivated by the scenery.

Isabella kept saying, ” I can’t believe I was on the Great Wall of China, I can’t believe it!!!!!” 🙂
( By the way, she is thinking about writing a blog post to tell her perspective, I am encouraging her!)

We are back at the hotel room and resting since we only got a few hours sleep. Then we have to eat dinner, pack up and tomorrow morning we leave to go to the Beijing airport at 7:30 am to fly to Guangzhou!!!!! Our plane leaves at 11am and we arrive at 2:00. I am CRAVING warmer temperatures. I need to thaw out!! LOL
This will be the city that we receive our daughter in…..I get chills thinking about it!! Our adventures have YET to begin! 😉

Here is the photo album from today!! I wish I had time and internet speed to write a caption for each photo! The pics go in order of our day….at the end, there are random street shots. I am trying to capture China in the pics, the way our eyes see it. Coming home we went through “old Beijing” and there is SO MUCH TRAFFIC!!! The shops are small, individually owned and there are a lot of people! I love to just people watch…such an interesting culture, for sure!!!

china day three