We're gonna walk up that? - Great Wall of China

For our second day in Beijing, we decided to go out to the Great Wall and spend the day in that area. We found a section that you could go to via train, so we decided that that would be a better bet than trying to convince a taxi to take us all the way out there. We aimed to get to the train station for the 9am train so we got there at 830 and got in line. After 9 came and went, we figured out that we had missed the line for the earlier train and were now in line for the 11am train, so we waited in line with about 100 other Chinese people for 2 hours for the train to come. As there were no seating assignments on the train, this line was important because as soon as we were let out onto the platform, all hell broke lose as everyone ran to get a seat. Joe and I took off with our moms jogging behind us and managed to find 4 seats for us, but it was one of the craziest things we've participated in. They had just sprayed the platform with water for some reason, so all 100+ of us were sprinting on wet ground to get to the train first. Only in China. 

A picture of the line we stood in for 2 hours. Worth it to get a seat. 

As we approached the area, we rode past different sections of the Great Wall which was really cool. We didn't realize how steep some parts were, nor could we really fathom how long the wall is until we started seeing different parts of it. Once we got to the part that we wanted to go to, we bought tickets and went out in search of a pulley/roller coaster type deal that would take us up to the wall. When we didn't find it, we decided to just walk up it, much to our moms distress. None of us really anticipated how steep the ground would be or how hard it would be to walk up, but it was really cool and a lot of fun. We stopped to take a lot of pictures and observe the other tourists that were up there. We walked all the way to the cable car stop and took that down, so we went through 4 or 5 different sections of wall, each a different steepness, some with stairs and some with just flat rocks. By the end, we were all pretty tired but all agreed that it was our favorite activity so far that we've done. It was awesome to be at such a famous and incredible landmark with so much history and I'm really glad we made it there and got to experience it with our moms. Also, they wanted me to point out that they walked up the wall and succeeded in keeping up with us, something they were both skeptical of when we first got there.

First view of our section of the wall.

At the base of the wall

On top of the world.

View of what we had climbed at that point (after about 2 sections)

Resting after a long climb.

View of mountains in the area and another part of the wall.

What one lady was climbing in - ridiculous.

The busiest section of the wall right by the cable car - where's Catriona.

They didn't want to go up to the last little part, so they waited for us. 

The cable cars that got us down to the base again.