The Great Wall and the Summer Palace

Another busy day with an early start to drive out of the city to visit a section of the Great Wall of China. This was done to beat the traffic and the crowds and also at a cooler part of the day.

A beautiful day and the area of the Wall we were walking on was Gates 7 - 12. You could choose to do as little or as much as you wanted. I only walked to gate 8 - relatively flat and not many steps. After that, the steps became steep and uneven and in some spots, up to half a metre high. Brad said he would only go to gate 9, but of course, he had to be a hero and clambered up to gate 12. Anyway, the pictures will give you a bit of an idea.

After lunch, it was off to a jade factory - plenty of jade jewellery available to purchase. They tried to sell me a jade bangle that was originally $850 for $450 - nice, but not that nice.

Final stop for the day was the Summer Palace which featured a long walkway where all the beams had individual decorative paintings, something like 14000 paintings. The walkway ended at a marble boat... looking a bit faded now but would have been ornate in its hay-day.Read more