Saturday June 14

Continued from Friday....

We finished yesterday with a little rickshaw ride through the Hutong and had lunch with a local family that works with our agency.

This is their home

We had a little downtime at the hotel in the late afternoon, and then back to our little neighborhood park for a little catch with Wyatt...I think he likes being the star of the show over there.  All the old men stand around us and ohh and ahh at the way the little dude can chuck a baseball.

We made it an early night in preparation for the Great Wall...of course we still woke up by 3 am, so T and I get to sit and spend some time talking, which has become our habit and is really nice in all the bustle.

SATURDAY MORNING...

Saturday was an AWESOME and busy day.  We met up with everyone for the bus trip out of the city to the Great Wall.  Our guide Alice again gave us some enjoyable Beijing history on the ride up.

We arrived at the Wall and after this group photo with the other families....

we said goodbye to all but one couple in our group and headed up to the 13th tower at the top of the mountain.  We had to keep a pretty good pace to make the loop and Wyatt pretty much led the charge and made the top first.

Though it was crazy crowded and chaotic from the bottom to the first couple of towers, the crowd thins fast and it was not at all crowded all the way at the top.  At the top we got a chance to rest and relax for a bit and really soak in the view, which is spectacular.  I can only imagine the photos Tom could have gotten up here.  We did press a passing Spaniard that we chatted with into some pictures for us.

There is a little old woman half way up that has an old Dremmel and will engrave a heart lock that you can attach at points along the wall.  It would appear they have been doing this for many, many years.  We had one engraved for Zi Xuan with her initials and Wyatt took the lead on the operation.  We hope to show it to her when we bring her back to see China when she is a little older.  We have the spot logged well.

Back in Beijing in the late afternoon, we took some time to rest a bit, get our stuff ready to go for the very early departure and then head out for one last night exploring some of the more colorful areas of the Wangfujiang.  

All the traditional delights are available with something to suit every palate...giant spiders, snakes, live scorpions large and small.  Of course for the more pedestrian, there is stuff like lamb and octopus which were delicious.  Wyatt thought it very bad form to not try something exotic and went with scorpions, at his insistence Dad joined in the fun.  John David refused...and amazingly, for all her travels and exotic tastes, Mom just could not bring herself to do it!  So we have that on her now....

It was a day none of us will ever forget, and we spent some family time talking about all we had seen and then turned in to get some rest for the 6:30 bus departure for the flight out to Zi Xuan's provincial capital  of Zhengzhou, Henan.