Great Wall and Ming Tombs

So we are officially on our 3rd day in China and it has been a packed experience already, after the initial challenge of getting to our hostel and buying a train ticket we ventured out in search for a tour to the great wall of china. We managed to book a tour for the next day via a little shop we were told to be outside at 7am.

So we had our first chinese dinner vegetarian stir fried noodles (safe option) and went to bed, with the time difference we hardly slept at all and ended up watching the thunder and lightning out our window for 4 hours! We got up and made it to the shop for 7am and were bundled into some dodgy looking people carrier with a driver who spoke no english. He drove us around the block picked up some more chinese people and dropped them off at a bus, we were signalled to stay put he then drove down some side street where he stopped and got out the car to have a chat with his friends. We were sat in the car wondering what we had let ourselves into as this did not look like an official tour bus! After 30 mins we drove around the block a couple more times picking people up and dropping them off before we pulled up at the side of the road and a woman opened the door who could speak english and told us we were her tour guide. We then got ushered onto a proper bus where we joined a number of westerners for the tour. It was a massive relief to finally see people who understood us and its only been 24 hours at this point!

It turned out we had a great day stopping off at Ming Tombs on route to the Great Wall which was a really calm place a world away from Central Beijing with lovely gardens and statues. We then made it to the Great wall in the afternoon which is awesome!!! It was hard work in the heat but an unforgettable experience, we got a cable car up to the wall and then spent a couple of hours walking it, although only a drop in the ocean when its over 6000km long. I have attached a couple of photos of us at the wall Kris's Donnie Darko impression with this sweat patch, lovely!!

Today we have been out to Tiannemen Square and the Forbidden City which is huge and it seems that we are celebrities over here as every 5 mins the locals want to take photos of us!!

We are off leaving our hostel now to make our way to the train station, we have the joy of a 12 hour train journey tonight to Xian getting in at 9am