Woke at 2.30am today to watch Australia be beaten by Germany 4-0 in their opening 2010 world cup match. We went back to sleep after the game and woke again later to meet the rest of the group in the lobby at 9am. We walked to Dongchan metro station and caught the train to Tiananmen Dong station. A tour of Tiananmen square and the forbidden city was included in this trip, but as we had already had the tour on the previous trip we asked if we could leave the group inside the Forbidden City and meet them later. We had another walk around Tiananmen square to take a few photos we missed out on when we were there last as we could not take a camera when we went to visit Mao. So we managed to take photos of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall and the monument to the peoples heroes.
We headed into the Forbidden City with the rest of the group, then set off by ourselves to see the Clock Exhibition Hall, which the lonely planet said was a "must see" in the Forbidden City. Amongst all the 18th century clocks was a gilt copper astronomy clock with a scale model of the solar system and another with a robot which writes Chinese characters with a brush.
We met the group at the North Gate and caught the bus to the Huiling a community based project for mentally impaired. Huiling is one of the intrepid foundation's sponsored places. When we arrived we were ushered into one of their work rooms that had been set up like a restaurant. We had lunch of spring rolls, 3 types of dumplings and cucumber with a sauce. It was delicious and had been made by what they call the trainees. The trainees are the mentally impaired people who the centre is for. After lunch we were treated to a show that had a great deal of audience participation. We all had a good time joining in.
After the show we were given a Chinese calligraphy lesson, which was very interesting.
In the evening most of the group went to see an acrobatics show at the Beijing Chaoyang Theatre. All the acts were absolutely amazing.
15th Great Wall of China Jinshanling to Simatai
We met the rest of the group at 7.30am in the lobby ready for the 3 hour drive to Jinshanling. This was a much harder walk than the previous walk on the great wall we did. We had to walk up to the wall, the brochure said it would take 30 minutes to complete but we did it in 10 minutes.
The scenery was amazing and we took so many photos, here are a few of them.
It was a tough walk as you can see by some of the pictures. The ground was rough and very steep in some sections. At one point we had to walk along next to the wall as a large part of it was demolished. One of the girls on the trip found it too difficult due to the heat and the tough conditions and ended up turning back with our tour leader and catching the mini bus to the end. We started the walk at 10.30am and finished at 4.30pm. We stopped frequently to rest, take photos and drink as the temperature was in the mid 30's. It was a 10km walk passing through 30 towers and over a suspension bridge.
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