Friday

Our last day on the wall☹️ But our first evening of exploring Beijing😁

We had a 45 minute bus journey taking us to the wall. As yesterday, this is a heavily populated tourist area, so much busier than we had experienced earlier in the week. These two areas have been much more security conscious too, with passport and bag checks.

As per usual, there’s lots of steps up to wall😂

Views from the top were as amazing as ever, some of us going for the ‘bonus level’ of extra steps to go that little bit further up the hill.

The drizzly rain made the steps a lot slippier, so we had to take our time going down…I was determined not to break anything on the last telling day😂

Looking across to the opposite side, there was part of me glad to not have to climb it but at the same time, sad that it was almost over.

Once down at ground level, we stopped to look at the foundations of a temple, which are all that remain after an earthquake destroyed the rest of it.

Back on the bus to go to lunch. We were treated to a quick face changing performance.

And then back on the bus to our last hotel, for a two night stay. To split the 2 hour journey, we had a brief stop halfway, to take a rickshaw around the Hu Tong area of Beijing which was full of shops and a lake.

Once we arrived at the hotel, there was a bit of downtime which allowed us to have a wander around the area. Located the McDonald’s, KFC and 7/11 for later😉 We also discovered a bakery which had these cute little cakes.

Dinner was a different experience as we all went to a buffet restaurant, where we had our first taste of western style food including pastas and pizzas, for a week! (It was mostly Chinese though)

Our last full day tomorrow and we’re spending it seeing the sights of Beijing🙂