Great Wall Great Adventure!

Hi! Dawn here! It's my turn to write the blog!!

It rained all night Wednesday and this morning we woke to glorious blue skies. The Great Wall was absolutely beautiful.  Jeanie and John LOVED the ride up the skylift to the Wall.  HAHA! We chose to walk to the right of the starting point and it was the STEEPEST side (without our knowledge!)  At some points it was so steep and high that we felt as if we were climbing the wall not walking!!  Most of us made it as far as we could go.  The air was thin and wind was cold so breathing was difficult at some points.  The view from the top was breath-taking!!  Some of us ran our batteries down on our cameras!!  We can't wait to share our pictures.  At this location of the Wall you can go back to the bottom on a tobaggan.   We had FUN going down and playing bumper boggin'.  The workers kept saying "Slow down!"  We took part in some local shopping at the bottom and got some good bargains.  Our trip home was interesting.  We went to McDonald's for lunch....AHHH Big Mac and fries-minus the salt....not the same and Pineapple Pies.  We ventured to the Bird's Nest (Olympic Venue) at 4:30 pm-during rush hour traffic!!  1st our bus stoppped running and we pulled over on the highway.  There was a problem with the OIL PUMP.  The driver got out, came back and got a wrench, went to the back fiddled with something and 10 minutes later we were on the way. It took us 2 hours to get to the Bird's nest and we only were allowed to jump out of the bus for 1 minute to take some pics about a block away.  What an impressive building!!  We got on the highway and rode past the "Water cube" and shot some blurry pics from the bus,  It was lit up with the blue lights and BEAUTIFUL.  we stayed in traffic for another hour or so.  At one point the driver was dozing and swaying back and forth and we though we were going to hit the guard rail!! We woke him up!! We finally go closer to home.  We stopped for take out and the bus moved and we saw a HUGE puddle of OIL!!  We though we weren't going to get home but, we made it and had some delicious dumplings!! YUMMY!  We are all tired and am sure our calves will be sore in the AM.

We have 2 more days to spend with the kids and we are looking forward to some smiles and hugs tomorrow!!!

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