Tianjin Municipality

We arrived in port an hour early, around 7am. There was some sun this morning but you could hardly see it for the smog. We met up with the other members of our group (organised through cruise critic) at 9am. We have Scott and Rana from Las Vegas, Tony from Toronto, Andrea and her son Matthew from California, and Don and Mary also from California. We didn't disembark until about 10:15am and then we had to go through immigration. Our bus was waiting and we left for the Great Wall at 11am. We only had the bus driver and no guide. We were to pick him up nearer to Beijing. Well what a journey we had! We were travelling along well until 1pm when we came to a standstill. Due to the five yearly meeting of the Communist Party there are police checkpoints on the outskirts of the city. We were caught in traffic for an hour and 40 minutes. We finally passed the bottleneck and then made a comfort stop and picked up something to eat. Sometime later picked up our guide, Jackie. We finally reached the Mu Tian Yu section of the wall at around 4:30pm. We had about an hour of daylight left. We didn't realise what a steep climb it would be to actually reach the wall and because of the time constraints we ended up taking the cable car up and down. Some of the steps had a rise of around 750mm and others only 50mm. You had to watch your step very carefully. Taking photos was difficult but hopefully some will be okay. We caught the last cable car down and then made our way to the restaurant for dinner as we had missed lunch. The food was great but the service was fairly ordinary. Because of the traffic issues Jackie suggested we go to the Birds Nest and Water Cube tonight instead of in the morning. We were glad we did because they looked fantastic all lit up. We were then dropped off at the Crowne Plaza Hotel. It wasn't too bad but I don't think maintenance is a priority. We are leaving an hour earlier than scheduled at 7:30am (to beat the crowds), so another early start.Read more