We had been warned that the overnight train to Beijing was often late getting in, but it pulled in almost exactly on time at six am. Tony and the boys had slept well -- I had woken up at nearly every station we stopped at on the way, but wasn't too dreary. The driver I had arranged was waiting for us on the platform, and soon led us to his van parked in the adjoining garage. There were huge puddles everywhere as we headed out of the city, and he told us that it had rained heavily the night before, which had broken the heat somewhat.
By 8 am, we were pulling into a nearly empty parking lot at Mutianyu. Most of the vendors had not yet set up shop, and there was no line to go up. I had been thinking that we'd take the cable car up and the toboggan ride down, but I didn't communicate that clearly to the driver when he bought us our tickets, so we wound up with tickets for the chair lift up instead of the toboggan. Not a big deal. Daniel was a little freaked on the chair lift, but Tony held his hand, and he was brave. He actually said he was happier on the chair lift than he would have been in the cable car (enclosed, but higher) -- who knows? The chair lift goes right over the toboggan run, and he was a little stressed about it looking down at the twists below.
I'm not sure I have the words to describe how magical it was to be on the Great Wall in the cool morning mists, nearly on our own. You see the nearby watch towers fading into the distance, but then you look at the other ridges, and realize that there is wall at the top of them as well. I took a ton of pictures, but I think I'll need to tweak them in photoshop a bit to get the buildings to stand out from the mist a bit more. Some of the passages between towers are ramps, rather than stairs, and Nicholas enjoyed running down them at full tilt -- and he could do so without crashing into anyone. One of the towers had stairs going up to the upper level, so we hung out up there a bit. We made our way almost to the cable car tower, and then decided to turn back before our magical moment became too much of a slog. By then (maybe 9 am) there were more people on the wall -- not anything that I'd really call a crowd, but it was no longer quiet and empty.
We made it back to where we started just before 10 am, and were among the first groups to ride the toboggan down. It turned out to be a quite gentle ride -- we had to slow down significantly to avoid ramming the chairs ahead of us. But we all enjoyed it. We spent a few minutes bargaining with the souvenir sellers -- Nicholas bought a magic trick, and Daniel a low-quality chop with his name on it -- and then headed back to the car, just as most of the tour buses were pulling in. I can't recommend more strongly that if you're going to the Great Wall to get there at 8 am.
What with Beijing traffic, it took us until about 12.30 to get to our hotel. It's in a traditional Beijing neighborhood (hutong) and the driver had to turn down a narrow street clogged with pedestrians and bikes. We got stuck for a while behind a propane delivery truck and squeezed by with very little margin. The last half a block was so narrow that the driver simply gave up and asked us to walk it, which we were happy to do. When we checked in, our rooms weren't quite ready, so we happily left our bags behind and went back out to explore the neighborhood. The narrow pedestrian street was Nan Luogo Xiang (South Luogo Street) which turns out to be a trendy street, sort of like parts of Greenwich Village or Soho in New York. Lots of young Chinese with cool hair cuts walking around and eating pudding and ice cream.
In the evening, we walked over to the nearby lake neighborhood, where we rented a paddleboat, walked around a bit, and had hot pot for dinner. A good welcome to Beijing.
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