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Part two of the trip: Visit the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China. |
October 17: Forbidden City
The next morning, we woke up and got breakfast at Peet’s Coffee in CityWalk. But we ended up taking a little too long and we just barely missed the subway train into the city. So, we took the next one (about 10 minutes later) and were running late to our 11:30 am tour of Tienanmen Square & Forbidden City.
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| Universal Beijing Resort is the end of the line, so when we boarded the train, we had it to ourselves. By the time we got to the center of the city, it was packed full of standing commuters. |
The tour guides were extremely accommodating and were able to send someone to find us and bring us to our tour, already in progress.
Seriously, they didn’t need to do that, as the booking site clearly said that late arrivals would not be accommodated.
One quick note about the Beijing Subway: For some reason, everyone has to go through security in order to get on the train. The security people didn't seem like they were doing much. It almost felt like a make-work program, but maybe it is used for something more sinister? It felt a lot more like a TSA-style waste of time than something that would actually be capable of accomplishing anything (sinister or not). But I only used the subway two days. I imagine it would be a fairly annoying thing to do as a part of the daily commute, either way.
We met up with the tour group about halfway across Tienanmen Square and got to see the temple complex in the Forbidden City. The temples are beautiful, but they kind of all look the same. The tour started to feel repetitive after a while.
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| The Hall of Supreme Harmony, as opposed to the Hall of Central Harmony, the Hall of Preserved Harmony, the Palace of Heavenly Purity, the Hall of Celestial and Terrestrial Union, or the Palace of Earthly Tranquility. |
I think our tour guides did a good job, but ultimately, I don’t think I know enough of Chinese history to have appreciated the tour. It was interesting from an architectural perspective, and the buildings and squares certainly are beautiful. But perhaps my jet lagged self just wasn’t in the right mindset to appreciate it?
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| The sculptures and buildings are beautiful, no doubt about it. |
Anyway, our tour guides were very good, and we saw some beautiful buildings. But three hours was a bit more than my interest could support.
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| The Qianlong Garden was very peaceful and less monotonous. |
Our tour cost ~$35 per person and was booked through Trip.com.
I enjoyed the walk back to the subway station, but the 70-minute long subway ride back to Universal was a bit long. R fell asleep on my shoulder even though we were standing for most of the ride.
We checked out the restaurants at CityWalk and decided to eat at the very authentic and exotic CowFish restaurant which definitely isn’t almost exactly the same as the CowFish at CityWalk in Orlando. (It was very good). R fell asleep waiting for the food to come out while sitting up in a metal chair, but was able to wake up enough to eat dinner and walk back to the hotel.
Overall, it was a good jet lag day, and I learned that I don’t know enough Chinese history to be able to appreciate the Forbidden City at more than a superficial architectural level.
October 18: Great Wall of China at Mutianyu
At 3:30 am, I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep. Stupid jet lag. We didn’t need to get to the bus to go to the Great Wall until 10:00 am. So I put on my jacket and walked around the hotel grounds taking pictures.
My father had visited Beijing in 2002 for work, and talked about how awful the air quality was: everyone in his travel party had a cough for most of the trip because of all the pollution. But I think the pollution must have gotten much better over the past 22 years. The air was clear and the weather was lovely. Before the sun came up, the temperature was in the high 30s, and during the day it got to the low 50s.
In order to get to the bus on time, we decided to go to the bus stop before getting breakfast. So we left the hotel at around 8:00 am and took the 70-minute subway ride to the pickup spot. Once we found the bus, we went to the very authentic and exotic McDonald’s across the street for breakfast (R hadn’t had McDonald’s in over 11 years!) before we got on the bus.
Once on the highway, the tour guide helped us select the attractions we wanted to see at Mutianyu. R doesn’t particularly enjoy thrill rides or heights, so we stuck with the enclosed gondola ride up to the wall. A chair lift and mountain coaster are also offered at this location.
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| The meeting spot at the visitor center. |
Once we arrived, the tour guide took us to the meet up spot at the visitor center. Everyone stopped to use the restroom (Be sure to get some toilet paper that is dispensed at the entrance of the restroom, as there is none once inside!)
Then we made our way through the shopping area before we got on another bus to take us up the hillside. Once on the hillside, we hiked our way up to the gondola, where we had a smooth ride to the mountain ridge.
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| The view of the wall from the gondola. |
Signs in the gondola waiting area brag about all the world leaders who have ridden it over the years, including Bill Clinton, British Prime Minister John Major, and Prime Minister of Luxembourg Xavier Bettel.
This portion of the wall was restored in the 1980s and is in an extremely picturesque area.
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| You can see the crowd clumping around the stair at the next tower. |
The wall felt very crowded, but apparently this section of the wall is less crowded than others. Every few hundred feet, the wall has towers, which are accessed by narrow steps. These choke points required waiting in lines and were not as easy to climb as one might prefer.
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| Some portions of the wall have ramps while others have steps. It requires your careful attention to walk safely. |
R got tired of the uneven steps and crowds pretty quickly, but she insisted that I carry on further without her. I decided to go far enough to see one of each of the different types of watch towers before turning around. We met back up and took the gondola down to the shopping area. The gondola was clean and appeared to be well maintained. On the ride back down, R commented on how sooth the Gondola was, and a stranger sitting across from us responded in a thick German accent "That's German engineering for you." (Doppelmayr, the manufacturer of the gondola, is based in Austria. But I didn't have the guts to ask if products from Austria still count as German engineering.)
The tourists here were predominantly Chinese, as one would expect. But there was also a fair number of Australian, New Zealand, Russian, and Singaporean tourists. I had a brief conversation with an American tourist who quit his job to find himself. And in our brief conversation while waiting by the restroom, I think it became apparent to the both of us that we approach travel in ways that are diametrically opposed. In part one of this Trip Report, I said that I travel for neither food nor enlightenment... let's just say he was traveling for both of those things, and my interest in theme parks and tourist attractions seemed shallow and my statements about how everyone is the same basically everywhere fell pretty flat to him. It's funny how quickly we both politely found other directions to look!
China has a per capita GDP of $13,800, about the same as Mexico. So, in keeping with my position that people are pretty much the same everywhere, I found that the shopping area here reminded me of the shopping areas I’ve seen at tourist sites in Mexico. The language was different, but otherwise it felt almost exactly the same. Honestly, a lot of China reminded me of Mexico.
Eventually, it was time to meet back up with the tour group and return to Beijing. Traffic was pretty awful, so it took almost three hours to get back to the drop off point.
This tour cost about ~$45 per person (including the gondola) and was booked through Trip.com. I would probably not recommend as much time at the Great Wall as this tour included unless you plan to do a longer distance hike on the wall (the further you get from the entrance, the less crowded it is.) I might also recommend this trip length if you plan to see more attractions like the mountain coaster in addition to the gondola.
R fell asleep several times on the subway once again. And once we got back to the resort, we decided to get food at the hotel lounge, since nothing at CityWalk was speaking to us. I ended up having a wonderful club sandwich, and R had some sort of pasta thing that was very good.
That night, I fell asleep quickly, excited for a big day at Universal Studios Beijing, the only Universal theme park that I had never been to before.
The next part of this trip report will cover the first half of my day at Universal Studios Beijing!
Series Directory
Part 1: Background, Trip Planning, and Flight to Beijing
Part 2: Forbidden City and Great Wall of China at Mutianyu
