The Great Wall

On our last day in China, we visited the Great Wall. We were on the trip as part of a group of Ryan's coworkers,
and one girl who had lived in Beijing before, planned all the itinerary details and handled booking everything. I
really appreciated this, because the great wall is obviously huge and I would have had no idea how to choose where
to visit. Some parts are falling apart and abandoned, some are overly built up and very touristy, some include awkward
spectacles aimed at tourists that detract from the actual place itself. the part we visited has been restored, but was
otherwise simple, and we followed it to the end where the reconstruction stopped and saw the old original crumbling s
ections in front of a stunning view of mountains all around.

We unfortunately only had an hour to visit the area, which was not much time at all when you consider some people hike
it all day, and most of it is made up of very steep stairs that are time consuming to scale. I'm really glad we booked
it to the end to see the view though. But hurrying back to meet everyone else was grueling and we were totally panting
and drenched in sweat by the end of the hour. Very effective workout and if anyone else's wants to try.....We descended
from the wall to the bottom of the mountain by alpine slide, which was strangely out of place, but also really fun.