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| A dramatic view of the wall as it winds and wends across the landscape. |
Gang:
How was your Memorial Day weekend? John and I hosted our Annual World-Famous Yard Sale and Vintage Finds Bonanza at our weekend home in New York’s Catskill Mountains, and the sale was a massive success!
But let’s step back a bit, specifically to our recent trip to China, a journey that will be featured in the August issue of Delta Sky.
Frankly, I was bowled over by our visit to the fabled Great Wall, a monument that sits at various distances outside of Beijing. Sometimes the world’s wonders don’t quite live up to the hype. The Statue of Liberty is impressive but also much shorter than you might expect. Graceland is tiny, and the Corn Palace didn’t bowl me over. Happily, the Taj Mahal, the Eiffel Tower and the Empire State Building live up to the hype. And so, too, does the Great Wall.
Crafted of stone, brick, wood and mud, the Great Wall is a masterstroke of engineering. John and I elected to visit the Mutianyu stretch of the Great Wall that sits some 45 miles from China’s capital city. We were lucky enough to have a car and driver courtesy of the fabulous folks who organized our trip, Abercrombie & Kent, so we didn’t have to take the lengthy bus ride. And unlike several of the other stretches of the Great Wall, the Mutianyu length is decidedly less touristic and crowded. We arrived at the site and caught the cable car up and up to the wall—and what a vertiginous ride up to the wall it was!
But, oh, the Great Wall is amazing and seems to go on and on. John and I walked along the 1.4-mile length that is open to visitors at this stretch, and we poked about in the various watchtowers and climbed the steep steps up and up. The views were jaw-dropping, and the workout was killer.
Here are a few images from our visit:
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Before our visit to the Great Wall, John and I lunched upon superlative Peking duck at the famous Made in China restaurant at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in downtown Beijing. We needed the sustenance to make the climb up the Wall's steep ramparts.
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| A view of the Wall as seen from one of the various watchtowers. |
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John starts his climb up and up the Great Wall's seriously steep steps. A visit to the Great Wall is not for the out of shape. |
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| John stands tall atop the Mutianyu stretch of the Great Wall. We caught a cable car to reach the wall that perches high atop the mountains that surround Beijing. |