Chosen Together: China, Part 2

Seeing the Great Wall in China was definitely a highlight of the trip. We had to do a lot of walking and climbing stairs but the sights were amazing everywhere we went. We spent our time pointing out how far we could see the wall go in various directions and soaking in the sights as much as possible. Though the hiking wasn't easy I couldn't help but constantly think of how people built this wall by hand so many years ago. It's a neat experience when you get to see something that's truly awesome, as in 'inspiring awe'.

The Great Wall is 7-8 meters high, 4-5 meters wide, and the Mutianyu section is over 2 kilometers long.

View of the outside of the wall

Something unique to the this section is that it has 22 watchtowers spread about 100 meters apart from each other.

This section of wall was actually guarded on both sides.

We randomly spotted a donkey along the way!

There are different sections of the wall; we saw the Mutianyu section. It was first built in 550 and has since been restored/rebuilt a few times. It serves as a northern barrier which defended the capital and imperial tombs. The great thing about this section is that it is less busy than other parts. We could see the hoards of tourists in the more popular areas and were thankful to have a relatively peaceful hike where we were.

Another great part of this hike was seeing some of the unrestored sections.

We spent some time taking in the 360 view from atop this rundown tower.

One thing that made all the hiking difficult was the inconsistency in stair sizes. A lot of them were very short stairs which made for a clumsy gait. However, they could change height at anytime so you really needed to watch your step.