We went to the Great Wall, a jade store, had a wonderful Chinese lunch and flew from Beijing to Shanghai today. I was surprised to see how much farmland is around Beijing. Some of the flowers and trees are blooming and there is lots of pollen in the air. Jennifer is very congested.
Our guide, Martin, was amazing. He adjusted the timing so that we could visit sites with the least number of people- even tho it was still quite a few people. We got to the Great Wall in the morning and got a parking space near the front, by the time we left, the parking lot was full and the overflow lot and street were also full.
Since today was a Monday, some of the other tourist attractions were closed so more tourists visit the Great Wall on Mondays.
At the jade store, they explained about the dragon statue at store entrances. The dragon statue has an open mouth to get the money but no opening at the back so the money doesn’t come out. They want all money to go into the store and none to go out of the store.
At the Great Wall I climbed up partway to the top- got to Fortress #9 (the furthest was Fortress #12)
We were pretty tired when we arrived back at the ship port and there was a little mix up getting back on board the ship. They thought we’d have two copies of our passport but none of us had any copies, only the original passport. After 10 minutes or so, they determined they could make the necessary copies and we were able to go thru immigration. Can’t believe they had a copy machine right there that could be used to make the necessary copies. It was pretty quick and painless but many of the folks on the tour were very upset- one was so upset they called the general manager of Oceania to complain!
