Day 5…again…

This was the day we went to the Great Wall.

The buses parked in a parking lot near a circle lined with shops. Then we hauled our stuff up to the tiered area on the Wall. For this performance, we played in separate groups. The Chinese hub didn’t come, so it was only us and the Australians/Japanese. It was a casual performance. Our uniforms were polo shirts and khaki shorts. The original plan was black slacks. Thankfully, they decided it was too hot. We played all of our music, not including the tutti medley, and then were free to climb the Wall or wander back down.

I went part-way up the Wall with some friends and then we stopped to listen to the Australian group for a while. Then we climbed up to the “checkpoint,” a little shop selling t-shirts and cold drinks. The Wall here is very steep, and the steps are so worn out they’re more round than rectangular. We were at the Jin Shan Ling section of the Wall. It is not the most visited section, but it is supposedly better preserved. The biggest difference I noticed from the last time I had visited the Great Wall was the distinct lack of peddlers. My guess is the government ordered them to stop bothering tourists during the Olympics. However, I was disappointed. You get far better deals off peddlers than hotel gift shops. After reaching the checkpoint, we decided to go back down to where we started and try and climb up the other way as the original path was WAY too crowded. When we got to the bottom though, there was an official blocking the stairs and waving us all down to where we had performed earlier. Maybe the Wall was closed for construction, maybe they opened different areas to the public daily…I have no idea.

With that way blocked off, we just wandered back down and went souvenir shopping by the buses. We didn’t do a lot when we got “home.” We ate dinner, played cards for a while and then went to bed. We were tired after sweating through the 100+ degree day.