Our trip to the Great Wall was absolutely AMAZING! Our Saturday morning started a little like this… Ricardo, our tour guide from Italy (now living and working in Beijing) showed up in front of our hotel at 9:30AM with 4 1930’s BMW vintage bikes with side cars… and 4 drivers who were all locals who spoke no English. We quickly met the other party in our group – a couple from Colorado (Mark and Kathy). Ricardo mentioned that it would take about an hour to get the Wall… and then we were off… each in our own side car with our own driver… down the streets of Beijing. We were on highways, side streets, dirt roads… enjoying panoramic views of the mountain sides on our way to the north of Beijing.
Along the way we stopped at the Silver Pagodas, a site of majestic beauty with quite a Zen feeling.
Silver Pagodas
We road through some small Chinese villages until we arrived at the Great Wall near Huang Hua Shang.
We also made a short pit stop at a local super market/grocery store… as some light rain had settled in on our way to the Wall.
The ride was stunning… you could see pieces of the Great Wall as we road through the mountainside. We saw locals herding sheep on the road side… locals working on their houses.
I’m not sure words really do describing the Wall justice… it was just absolutely incredible to climb the Wall… and to see the beautiful views of the surrounding land atop of the Wall…. everything was so green and vibrant (although we were told by our guide that just a few weeks earlier everything was brown). I’ve completely over used the words “amazing” and “incredible”… but you have to see it and experience it for yourself. We had a picnic lunch on top of the Wall… and then headed down the other side where we had tea on a hill side before getting back on the bikes to begin our journey back to town.
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