Day 4 - The Great Wall & Ming Tombs

Chair life up to the wall, because the idea of walking up with Juliana was way too overwhelming.
Death grip on Juliana, because we were so high!!

This is a small part of the toboggan ride we'd be taking back down the mountain...

Isn't this amazing??

A view with a watchtower behind us...

A view with the wall way behind us...

She kept saying, "I'm on the great great wall!"

Juliana asked if we could bring the Pooh family onto the wall, so of course we did. We can't wait to get this printed, framed and hung in her room!

The second watch tower we got to, we got to climb up top for an even better view!

Jacob and I peaking out :-)

WOO HOO!!! We're on the Great Wall of China! I can't believe we made it to one of the Great World Wonders, walked along it and took in the beautiful scenery.

We nearly did this walk way down and way back up, but it was so hot and Juliana was exhausted! It was nice though, because you could still see the watch towers and wall for miles up there.

Jacob up on the wall...

I had so many more pictures of the Great wall as well as video, but I tried to pick out the best ones to show. More are on our shutterly photo site in case you're interested. After taking the toboggan ("giant slide" to Juliana) down the mountain, we headed to lunch at the city's well-known Jade Museum. I have never seen so much Jade in my life, in all shapes and colors, in decorations, statues, jewellery, ornaments and so on and so forth. I wanted to buy a few pieces, but the prices were very, very expensive.

Next up was the Ming Tombs where 13 of the city's emperors are buried. The amount of land and work put into creating one single tomb for an emperor was so hard for me to wrap my head around. The first two emperors are buried elsewhere before the third emperor chose this site to create the Ming tombs and the seventh emperor was lost and no one ever knew what happened to him.

Here's a great view of the outside of the Ming Tomb...

This is the "Gate of Death," which means those on the inside are deceased and those that come out are still alive.

This massive building houses the entrance, now closed off, into the tomb for the emperor, empress and all of their belongings, (gold, silk, clothing, furniture, etc.) because the Chinese people believe that when someone dies, they take these things to their next life.

Inside here was a massive tower with the emperor's name inscribed on it.

Our driver and tour guide made a quick stop so that we could see the Olympic buildings from 2008. The bird's nest was amazing...

So was the ice cube where Michael Phelps got famous!
Finally, after a 9 hour day, they stopped at the Silk museum and although I did not take pictures, it was fascinating to see how pure silk is made and how incredibly expensive it is. In ancient times, locals were not allowed to have silk or else they would be beheaded. It was reserved solely for royalty.

PHEW! This was byfar the most amazing day of our trip and we got to see so many different things including some I just couldn't get to. We were thankful to have spent the extra money on a private tour, because we could get all of the descriptions and history about each site we stopped at as well as drive through the local villages and fields.