Adoption: The Great Wall of China

On our second (last) day in Beijing, we took a two our drive to the The Great Wall of China. Even though the wall is in Beijing it takes about 2 hours to get there. Driving in China is nothing like driving in America and we were without a car seat. Ezra thought he could just run circles around the vehicles. Seriously, this mama’s car seat advocate heart had to be VERY adaptable on this journey. Here is Ezra just taking a two hour car ride on the floor of our van.

The drive up to the Great Wall was beautiful. I can’t wait for the opportunity to go back to China and plan a true tour of the area. I would love to have stopped at all the little parks and towns along the way. There are several options for viewing the wall. Our guide took us to the Mutianyu area. She explained that this area had a huge make over recently. They added modern bathrooms and some little shops along the way. Our guide also explained that this area of the wall is a little further away but less crowded.

For our tour of the wall we wanted to ride the closed cable cars up and take the toboggan down but it is about an hour walk between the watch towers. Our guide explained our only choice would be to take the ski lift up. I was totally unsure of this with Ezra but chose to wear him in my Lillebaby carrier on the way up. He did great and barely wiggled while looking around at everything.

I had hoped that the skies would be clear but it was pretty overcast and very HOT. (China has a new kind of hot that even this Florida girl couldn’t handle). We had an hour to explore the various parts of the wall. The kids had a great time running around and playing tag in the Watch Towers. I was paranoid the whole time that one of them was going to topple of the top of the or face plant down on the uneven walkway. Surprisingly we all survived.

There are a couple of ways “down” the Wall but the most popular is the toboggan and let me tell you, this is a MUST do. Our kids had heard about the toboggan from a couple of other families and had watched a ton of videos. I wish I had gotten a better video but my kid wanted video himself so we basically get to see his shoes the whole time. LOL.

It takes about 5 minutes to take the toboggan down and is so much fun. You control the speed or in my case the toddler controls the speed and you try your best not to crash. If you have the chance to visit this section of the wall, make sure you choose the ski-lift/toboggan option.

After we toured the Wall, our guide took us to a really nice restaurant. She explained the many of the local restraints were “family” style. We ordered a few different things and had the best eggplant dish I have ever eaten in my life.

Our day ended with a race against time to get to the train station where we would head off to city #2, Zhengzhou, Henan Province where we would meet our daughter the next day.