BEIJING 2017: Day 3 (19 November)

Hello! I feel like it’s been quite awhile since I updated my blog . I’ve been working full-time in an office recently and will be working for the whole December until school reopens next year. I will try to post more often but it’s actually quite hard for me to do that. I spend 9 hours sitting in front of the computer working, so when I come back home I just want to take a shower and sleep.

Anyway, I’ll try to finish my Beijing ‘series’ as soon as possible because I have so many blog posts ideas and can’t wait to write them out! Let’s not waste any time — here’s my day 3 trip in Beijing!

Mutianyu Great Wall —

The Mutianyu Great Wall is one of the more popular Great Wall sections in Beijing, aside from the Badaling section. It was quite far from my hotel so I had to take a taxi to reach there. I know I’ve mention that the subway is a much budget-friendly choice of transportation in Beijing, and that taxi fares are more expensive. Unfortunately, the Mutianyu Great Wall lies at the outskirts, where no subway stations are built there. Sure, you can take public transports, take the subway to the nearest station to the Great Wall, then take the public bus. In my opinion, it’s rather a waste of time and energy.

It took me almost 2 hours (as there was traffic jams) to arrive there. The taxi driver drove into some parking lot and agreed to wait there until I’ve done touring. There are 3 ways to get up the Great Wall, it’s up to you of course.

If you like mountain climbing, you can choose to climb up the mountain for about an hour to reach the Great Wall. I didn’t think that I could endure such exhausting activity. I would probably be half-dead and have no more energy to tour the Great Wall anymore once I’ve done climbing up the mountain. On the bright side, it costs you nothing at all.

Or if you’re not the athletic type of traveler like me, you can choose the take the cable car or cableway. Bear in mind these 2 are different (the price is same though).

Single trip: CNY 100

Round trip: CNY 120

If you think you’d like to descend the mountain in a more exciting way — take the luge (like a slide, except it’s a freaking long one). Take a look:

So, unless you want to take the cable car back down, you HAVE to buy the cableway tickets, which is connected with the luge tickets. The difference between cable cars and cableways: cable cars are, well, cable cars; cableways are basically like this —

I would highly recommend taking the luge back down, trust me, it’s an EXCELLENT experience. It’s totally safe, with a handle you can push to control the speed you’re descending down.

The scenery is mesmerizing, with fog and clouds entwined together in the skies and the endless view of overlapping mountains. It just blows me away thinking about this magnificent structure. My dad reminded me to ‘touch the stone walls’ as he said “you’re touching something that has been here for centuries”. True enough, Dad. 😂

I was done touring there after an hour and left for my next destination – the Bell and Drum Tower. I’ve seen bloggers mentioning this place, so I figured I might as well drop by, since I would be passing by there on my way back my hotel. There were drum performances at certain times at the Drum Tower (check the times here).

Well, it was quite disappointing for me. I was curious about the drum performances, so I choose to only visit the Drum Tower. The drum performances were just some same sets of beating over and over again for only 5 minutes. There were some replicas of drums, the instruments the Chinese people used back in the days to keep track of time and some explanations on histories. That’s all.

I would like to mention one more thing, to get to the tower, you have to climb a flight of stairs. And that flight of stairs was very steep. Like VERY steep. I’d like to add in my defence that I have a fear of heights. Like to see how steep it was? HERE (feat random people, sorry for poor photography skills):

Luckily, there were some streets with all sorts of stalls selling snacks and stuff. You could say I did a little ‘food-shopping’ there. By the time I was done, the sky had already started to darken, so I called it a day.

That’s all for today! I’ve been really really busy these days, but I will definitely try to be active more. Bye!

Love @amethystmind25