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Today we were up, shower, shaved, deodorized, fed & at the bus by 0800. We tackled the Beijing traffic again & sat on the freeway for about 10 minutes waiting for the traffic to start moving again. Taxi drivers were getting out of their taxis for a smoke & were wiping down their taxis while they waited for the traffic to start moving again. We went by the Bird's Nest & Water Cube (venues for the 2008 Olympics) for a photo opportunity. Unfortunately it was very smoggy & hard to see. We got a pretty good view of the Bird's Nest but the Water Cube was virtually impossible to see.
There were lots of solar lights in the shape of the Bird's Nest all around it, but it really seemed strange to me that they would use Solar power when the area is so smoggy & foggy all the time (we never did see the sun while we were in Beijing). We then headed over to the Ming Tomb. The buildings at the Ming Tomb again were very similar to all the other building we had toured. Our group have had several discussions over the past few days as to how these building were built 400 years ago with no power tools nor with the help of hydraulics.
Throughout the whole Ming Tomb, as in all our tours, Rocky gave us so much information that we were on information overload. All his explanations were extremely informative, humorous and he was so interesting to listen to, but like I mentioned, we were all on info overload so I don't remember a lot of the details to the last few places. After a brief tour and shopping at the Jade factory, we headed for another Chinese lunch, did a bit of shopping & then off to the Great Wall.
The Great Wall was amazing. There are 2 options at the Wall....the easy way or the hard way... We all took the easy way, which was a good thing as from our starting point it is a fairly steep up hill all the way. All of the group started up the wall. A portion stopped at the 1st lookout tower, a lot stopped at the 2nd lookout tower & a few of us silly people headed up to the 3rd lookout tower.
Fortunately we did not have time to go to the 4th lookout tower as I was pretty tired, flushed & sweaty by the time I got to the top of the 3rd tower (even my passport was sweaty). After spending a couple of hours climbing up & down the wall, we rushed off to our Chinese Dinner & Opera. The drive down the mountain was full of switchbacks and hair pin turns. Jack commented a few times that there is no way he could fit one of his buses down that road. It was really tight for the Chinese, short wheel based, bus.
The rush hour traffic was hair raising again. We were watching the cars braid in & out of each other. It is amazing that there are not more accidents. The drivers here are in a hurry & fill up any open space by weaving in & out of traffic, down the shoulder, honking their way through, but the honking is more like "I'm coming through!!" not a "road rage" honk. I will never look at the traffic on Route 90 the same way again!
Once we got to the Opera House, we only had about 20 minutes to eat & get into the show. We went & put an empty water bottle & piece of paper on our chairs to hold them while we ate. When we came back people had taken our chairs but as soon as we showed them our "possessions" had been knocked to the floor, they moved, go figure. The Opera was basically 3 skits or acts. They had subtitles in English up on a big board to so we could understand the "screeching". It sounded like someone stepped on the cat's tail. The second skit was pretty painful, but the last one was amazing. There was the "lady star" & 5 gentlemen throwing batons in the air to each other. They then started throwing them to the lady & she bounced them off her feet, back to them. She even used both feet at the same time. It was amazing.
When it was over, we headed back to the hotel to pack up & get some sleep. Tonight we were up until about 10:30 which is about 2 hours later than we have been. It is funny how our whole group is on the same schedule.
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