Our final day in Beijing included one of the most famous man-made objects on the planet: the Great Wall of China. In the morning, we all piled into the familiar tour van that we had grown to love over the past couple days for its air conditioning and headed toward the outskirts of the city. A half hour later, we were outside the city on the highway surrounded by mountains. As the smog became less dense, the scenery got better and better. Around twenty minutes away from where we were going to climb, we got our first glance of the wall winding its way across the mountainous ridges. It looked pretty mystical and appeared much steeper in certain spots than I had imagined.
Along the final stretch of road before the entrance to climb the wall, there were buses and cars parked for many kilometres. There were many people walking up the road, which would have been quite a hike itself just to arrive at the base of the wall. Lucky for us, our guide was well connected with one of the attendants in the closest parking lot to the wall. After getting our tickets, we had around two hours to climb the wall. The first choice we had to make was whether to go left or right at the entrance. As the vast majority of Chinese people chose to go right because that's where Mao Zedong climbed the wall, we went left where the climb was much the same but where there was a little more air to go around. 
The hike to the top of the peak we were climbing provided some spectacular views of the surrounding valley and the wall itself. It was quite a sight to look across the valley and see the huge crowd ascending the section of the wall that went to the right from the entrance. We set a pretty steady pace on our way up, and found somewhat surprisingly that we had energy to spare at the top. We took many pictures as we climbed up, and they seemed to get better the further we went. After about an hour, we came to a tower where you were not permitted to go any further. Looking out at the wall beyond the fence, you could see that sections of it were gradually getting worn down by nature's work. 
After descending the steep slope of the Great Wall, we made our way to a restaurant before heading to an area known as the "Spirit Way" near the Ming Dynasty Tombs. The area consisted of a walkway between two sets of very massive statues that had been converted into a park. It was a pleasant break from the crowds that were scattered everywhere around the major sights in Beijing. The Sprit Way was very pleasant and quiet. We took a nice walk down the length of the entire walk way, ending at a giant red gate. It was a nice ending to our time in Beijing. From there, we went directly to the airport and boarded a plane to Xi'an shortly thereafter. After a relatively short delay on the tarmac, we made it to our destination rather painlessly. We felt bad for the rest of the tour group who were on a different flight; unfortunately for them, their plane was delayed much longer and did not arrive into Xi'an until 12:30 am. We felt lucky to have been well-rested for the next day's trip to see the Terra Cotta Warriors.
- Eric
...and here is the building where Michael Phelps from the U.S. had so much success! 
Almost more striking than the buildings in the park was the smog. It was a sunny, cloudless day, but the sky was sure not blue! 
Walking around the Olympic Park in the brutally humid and windless Beijing heat made me feel very bad for the athletes 2 years ago who actually had to exert themselves at this temperature. I said to my Dad, "I can't imagine running a marathon in this heat!", and he replied, "I can't imagine running to that fence!" (about 30 metres away). I totally agreed! At the Olympic park Eric and I were constantly approached by shy Chinese tourists wanting family pictures with us giants. 
Next we headed to the Summer Palace, where the emperors, other royalty, and maybe a few lucky eunuchs got to hang out. It was basically a massive complex including a huge man-made lake, gardens, trees, and nice buildings. 
I also wanted to include this picture of one of the many dishes we had for lunch that day. I didn't take many food pictures on the trip but glad I took this one because this ended up being my favourite dish of the trip. A little bit spicy, chicken, peanuts, green onions, some kind of sauce......it is actually making me hungry right now. 
After lunch we visited the extremely beautiful Temple of Heaven. In Korea, all of the temples are green and not too big, because Koreans don't like to make temple buildings larger than nature (i.e. larger than the trees). In China, the main belief seems to be that everything should be made as big as possible, so I was quite impressed with this temple compared to the small Korean ones we've seen. The blue color was also just really beautiful. 
This is a smaller temple in the complex. 
An interesting fact is that the Temple of Heaven is not held together with any nails - all of the wooden pieces interlock like a big 3D puzzle. You may wonder - if it's wood and it got hit by lightning, wouldn't it burn down? Well, they've thought of that - the Temple of Heaven and all of the buildings in the complex had thick wires running up the sides of the buildings to the top so that if lightning hit, the electriticy would go down the wires to the ground and not touch the wood. 
