Beijing, part three.

The Great Wall. I still can't quite believe I was actually there.

 

I carried that camera bag around like it was my job. And the camera was never in it so by the end of the trip it was just stuffed with random flyers and used napkins and stretched out hair ties, and there I am, curled around it on an airport bench like my left kidney's in there.

Randy and I knew we needed to bring raincoats with us so I, being hyper-cognizant of the 44-pound luggage weight limit, bought one of those "coats in a bag" from REI; an ultralight waterproof shell jammed inside a bag the size of a tennis ball. Randy went the other way, opting for this three-layer red jacket in the picture. He strolled around the store zipping up zippers and snapping snaps, looking for a coat with, quote, "enough systems". Randy really likes a coat that does the work for him; if he gets hot, he wants a ripcord he can pull that opens a hidden vent under his arm. If he gets cold, he wants to be able to reach back and unzip an entire other, heavier coat out of the hood. I felt smugly efficient tossing my coat/bag combo into the suitcase, but then in China I refused to take the coat out of the bag. It was sprinkling at the Great Wall but it wasn't enough to justify destroying the compact perfection of coat in a bag. Randy strutted around like a big red dry rooster, zipping shit, unzipping other shit, "Erin! Look at all my systems!" Meanwhile I'm hunkered down in a damp sweatshirt with the camera bag on my head, waiting for a typhoon so I could spring my coat from its skintight chrysalis. Whatever. When Randy manages to find the fifty yuan his systems ate I'll concede defeat.

 

We also went to The Summer Palace. Breathtaking.

 

And we drove downtown to walk around the Olympic venues, the National Stadium (the Bird's Nest) and the National Aquatics Center (the Water Cube).

Man, I love going back through these pictures. This was such an incredible trip. And now you're up to speed on the first two days!

Comments

[Anonymous]

Where on the great wall were you that there was nobody there? Or are those canned photos?

We were taken to the Wall the day after we landed, and we were the only 2 "white" people there out of maybe 50,000 on the wall (5 abreast times a solid 2 miles of people). Must be a slow day, there's hardly anyone here, said our guide.

Arggh gah mgklwk, we agreed.

[Erin]

Wow. I wish I could tell you exactly where we were. Our guide was insanely good at getting us to a location like half an hour before the crowd exploded around us. We were in Shanghai during the World's Fair AND China's national holiday-- during which the entire country gets three days off-- and her finesse was the difference between actually getting in and out of somewhere or sitting on the bus for two straight days.

[Angela]

not that this has anything to do with anything but i once got a tshirt in a soda can right out of the vending machine. i hated to unravel it from that neat little compact form.