Saturday, October 22, 2011

The Great Wall and Summer Palace

We went on a tour of the Great Wall and the Summer Palace. We had to wake up at 5:00. We had a nice breakfast, until our tout guide, Helen, came to our hotel.  We got in the van and then headed to pick up eight other people.  Once we finally had everyone, we headed to the Summer Palace.  I slept a little on the way.

We saw the Marble Boat and several "guard" animals.  We took a lot of pictures and my camera battery went out twice.  When we left we headed to a jade factory to learn about jade and have lunch.  When we were going in and leaving there was this hairy thing in a bowl of water.  I thought that it was alive, but it was really a toy called a "Beaver Ball".

We left and headed to the Great Wall.  It took about 20 minutes.  We had to stand in a really long to get to the cable cars.  After we got into the place we saw how fast the cable cars go.  Mommy and I were a little bit scared.  We made it and had a great time climbing on the Great Wall.  We got to climb in one of the guard towers.  It was really steep in some places.  We ended climbing at about 3:30 and headed back to meet Helen.  We went back down the cable cars and rode down facing backwards.  Going up forwards ended up being scarier than riding down facing backwards.  I wanted to buy a souvenir and asked Helen to help.  She ended up buying me a medal made out of jade and gold with my name and the date on it.

We got back in the van and started driving to a Tea House.  I slept most of the ride there.  On the way there we passed the Birds Nest Stadium and Aqua Cube.  I didn't drink much tea because I was not feeling well.  Once we were done at the tea house we got back in the van and started dropping everyone off.  When we got back we headed up to the lounge and got chocolate and fruit.  Then we went downstairs for dinner.  Mommy had a steak sandwich (no bread) and I had a burger.  After all of that we went upstairs and passed out in our beds!