Beijing and the Great Wall

The Our next day at the Great Wall was incredible and not because we were at the Great Wall. This part of the Great Wall is supposed to be more famous and a better view than the other part of the Great Wall we saw a few weeks ago on the Nautica. This is the part of the wall that the famous people come to see, I frankly liked the part we saw last time better. Part of it was the crowds. This place was super crazy. But, I am getting ahead of myself and the story of the day. 

We were picked up by Big Chi from the hotel at 9:30 AM, he didn't want us to be late to the luncheon that Oceania was putting on for those of us on the Around the World trip at the Great Wall. Now, there had been lots of discussion among ourselves as to where exactly were  we having lunch. Some people thought we were having lunch at a hotel near the Great Wall and others thought we were having lunch on the Great Wall itself. Turns out we had lunch outside at the foot of the Great Wall. It was a setting that couldn't have been beat. Thank God the weather was perfect. If we had had this lunch the last time we were at the Great Wall our drinks would have frozen solid. 

This was our view at lunch

The tables

The flowers on the table. 

Anyway, we got there super early, Big Chi made sure of that, and the drinks started flowing. There was red wine, white wine, beer, soft drinks, coffee, and tea.  A little background here. There are 150 of us on the ship on the ATWT, from now on that's the acroym I'm using for the Around the World Trip,  and we were all having lunch here. About 40 of us were here overnight so 40 of us had to wait at least an hour for the busses from the ship to arrive before we could eat. All right, I admit it I was a tad tipsy, but I sure had fun. 

The cherry blossoms were in bloom

After lunch we went to the "famous" part of the wall. It was impressive, but as I said I liked the other part we went to better. Then we had the long two and a half hour bus ride back home to the ship. It was a great part of this adventure

The Great Wall with a million visitors 

And of course the kids:)

Chow for now :)