a great wall

It was indeed a great wall.

My dad's friend who lives in Beijing gave us the name of his driver, so we really lucked out: no tour bus or taxis, just our own personal driver to take us to the Wall--or should I say, our own personal "friend," since it's strictly illegal to be a personal driver. You can only be a taxi-driver if you want to be paid for driving. It was about an hour and a half drive through a more rural area that actually, funnily enough, reminded me of Indiana. Then we reached the Great Wall, and almost as stunning as the wall itself was the lack of crowds. There are multiple sections of the wall open for tourists, and we chose the less accessible one, which certainly paid off. We opted out of climbing up to the wall, instead taking the cable car up and then walked as much of the length of it as we could, including a staggering number of steps (if I hadn't been taking pictures, I would've counted). We felt very accomplished when we reached the top. There's not much to say about the wall, except that it's impressive and amazing. I think pictures will do more justice to it than my words: