Weekend in Beijing: Great Wall of China

The Great Wall is located in Beijing, but it is about 1.5 - 2 hours outside of the central part of the city. We decided the best way to get there would be to book a tour. After some research online, I decided we should visit the Mutianyu section of the wall. Most Beijing tourists visit the Badaling section of the wall which makes it very very crowded. Mutianyu is supposed to be a bit more peaceful and has some good hiking. Our tour guide (it was a private tour so just us) met us at our hotel and we drove out to the Great Wall. We had a perfect day weather wise to visit the wall.

When we arrived there were tons of stalls selling t-shirts and other chotchkies saying "I climbed the Great Wall" and "I love the Great Wall." You have to make your way past all of this and climb up a huge set of stairs or take a cable car to reach the Great Wall. We decided to climb up the stairs. Once we reached the top and got our first view of the wall, I got so excited! It was so amazing to actually see the Wall in person. The tour guide suggested a route for our hike along the Wall and we set off. Along the hike we visited several Watchtowers. There are more than 10,000 watchtowers along the Great Wall. They were used to house troops, store weapons, and send out signals if enemies were approaching.

Now for some great pictures of the Wall:

After hiking and taking in the glorious views, it was time to go back down the mountain. There are a few options for that: (1) climbing the stairs (2) taking a cable car (3) riding in a toboggan. Of course we chose the toboggan - how cool is that?

After we reached the bottom of the mountain, we joined back up with our driver and headed to a local restaurant. The restaurant was geared towards tourists so it wasn't too great but we were hungry and needed to rest after all of the hiking. I am happy that we did a tour because we didn't have to think about transportation to the Wall but we could have easily explored the Wall and found lunch without a guide. Overall, it was a great experience and a highlight of the trip.

The next highlight was later that night (after a couple hours of rest) when we visited Quanjude for some delicious peking duck. We were told when you visit Beijing the two things you have to do are visit the Great Wall and have peking duck. Everyone we asked recommended the same restaurant - Quanjude. The restaurant is famous for their duck and has a great location behind Tiananmen Square. 

We arrived around 8 pm and there was a mob of people outside the place (which is how we found out because every other place on the street was deserted). We put our name in for a table and they told us to come back in about an hour. We received a ticket with a number - 430. We arrived back in about 45 minutes and went inside to wait. They were calling out the numbers in Mandarin but we figured out they were on number 250 by looking at peoples' tickets. Initially we figured it was going to be quite a long wait but they were actually calling a couple numbers per minute (the restaurant is huge and has a lot of tables). I kept running up to the booth to see what number they were on. I had no idea how we would know when they called us.  Turns out I didn't need to worry for two reasons: (1) they put a star next to our name so the waitress would call our table number in English  (2) We were the last people on the list! We got to the restaurant just in time to put our name in for a table. I'm so happy we did because the food was incredible.

Seriously. Best. Duck. Ever. We both said we'd visit Beijing again just for the duck.