Today in Galveston it is flipping blustery. Seriously, the wind is howling - the gusts make our little Honda feel like it will topple over and go tumble-weeding down Mechanic Street. It is freaking cold too. I mean, come on - 2 days ago Mikie came to work wearing shorts and the Spring Break tweens were walking around the Strand with bikini tops on. It was beautiful (the weather - not so much the tweens). Now it is cold. Not Beijing cold, but cold.
Day 15:
(Beijing, China)
Amanda tip #4: Hire someone she knows to take us to the Great Wall - the tour busses are tourist traps and will charge you more to do the same stuff. Woops. Well, to be honest we were almost LOOKING for someone to treat us like tourists so we could sit back and take stuff in, so it worked out okay after all.
The tour bus scheduled us for the first pickup and 7am came really fast. Aside from the fact that the tour guide tirelessly tried to excite the group about the "authentic Chinese lunch" we were going to get that was included in our ticket price (Holy COW they enforce the unadvertised 1 beer-limit per person with lunch!), the Great Wall was, in fact, great. It was astounding. It was massive. And, on the top, it was really really cold.
We were asked by quite a few people to have their picture taken with US - with THEIR cameras. It was funny - like being a celebrity, but not really - I'd imagine it was much like being Pauly Shore. (sorry, Pauly - I loved you in Son in Law!)
According to the Chinese, once you have climbed the Great Wall, you are a hero. From this point on, feel free to address us as such. (Is there a facebook status update for "hero"?)
Anyway, we also got to see the Ming Tombs and the Jade factory as part of the tour. The Ming Tombs were pretty cool, but the jade factory was basically THE thing Amanda was trying to warn us about - they let you loose in the Chinese-government-controlled factory (they're ALL controlled by the Chinese government, by the way) where you walk thru the briefEST self-led tour on the history of jade (riveting!) and into this GIGANTIC airplane
hanger full of rows and rows of every object you can think of made from jade - and at least 2 salespeople to every tourist. It is like an AMWAY convention. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT. Mikie and I found the $.50 cent beer area and happily waited on the rest of the group to be bled dry of their remaining yuan.
came to a close when our fellow tourists, who were, in fact NO dummies and caught on to the whole "bleed us dry" game shortly after the jade factory incident when our tour guide announced that we'd be going to a "spa massage facility" and we could purchase a very therapeutic (and expensive) foot massage. (Amanda gets her 30 minute pedicures WITH beer for basically $7. This tour charges $30/person.) led a coup and convinced the tour guide to have the bus driver drop us off at respective places around the city that we wanted to visit anyway. So, we hopped back on the subway and headed back to the city center to meet up with Amanda again that night.
Note the purple and orange dumplings - the Chinese way of color-coding the different fillings!
Tomorrow: the northeast coast of China!
