Dear friends,
I spent one day at the Great Wall and one day at the Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square. I'm jumping on the Great Wall in the above picture =D.

When we went to the Great Wall, we woke up at 6:30 and left at 7am. It took us an hour to get to the Badaling portion of the Great Wall. When we were there, it was about 8am and we were surprised to find it closed, well, at least that particular entrance to which we went. We went to another entrance and they were accepting tickets so we quickly got in. There was virtually nobody on the Great Wall when we got there, but after half an hour, we saw lots of people coming in the other direction! They were coming towards us because I presume they had taken the train/cable car to the top and decided to come down the Great Wall instead of first climbing up.

The weather was pretty cold, but not as cold as that first day we went to the Forbidden City. We decided to go to the Great Wall the day we went because the weather was 19 degrees Celsius, but at Badaling it was about 4 or 5 degrees lower so we still dressed warmly.

We climbed about 2/3 of one side of Badaling then called it quits and headed to the other side where there were no people. The other side did not attract tourists because the slope was 65 degrees, very very steep. Of course, we didn't go to the 65 degree slope portion, we just climbed to the point where it became 65 and then we stopped and turned around. We got some great pictures, though, because there was nobody on this side of the Badaling Great Wall.

The day we went to the Temple of Heaven and Tiananmen Square, the weather was "hai hao," or okay. When we entered the Temple of Heaven, there were several gates you needed to get past. The outer perimeter was the sacrificial pit area and the second, third gates were more temples. When you finally arrive at the center, or the Hall of Prayer, you pray for good harvests. It was all very beautifully sculpted. When we went to the innermost Hall of Prayer, they were actually filming a movie or something at the site and we saw some traditional robes of the Emperor's advisors and servants. They roped off the area so no tourists could disturb them while they filmed.

The film crew filming at the Hall of Prayers

When we spent the other half of the day at Tiananmen after going to the Temple of Heaven, the weather was warming up slightly. Tiananmen was huge. It was hard too imagine that the June 4th incident happened here only 20 years ago.

You can find more pictures of the Great Wall here: China Photo Set 4
and
photos from the Temple of Heaven & Tiananmen Square here: China Photo Set 3.