Chinese people have a saying "He who has not been to the Great Wall is not a great man." I'm guessing these days this includes women too... so I'm happy to report I am now great. Or, at least a little better than I was last week.
Some quick facts about the Great Wall... It's about 500 years old, that is, the Wall as we know it. Various versions were built thousands of years ago, but the structure that we're used to seeing is more recent. It is not one continuous wall either... it's several different sections that stretch from the Yellow Sea on the East across the northern border. It was meant to keep out the Mongolians.
The mountain the Wall is built on is extremely steep... It seems like the mountains alone would have been enough to keep out intruders. But the Wall is impressive and snakes across the tops of the ridges.
This time of year, there isn't much color on the mountains, so things looked a little bit grey. 
But a few cherry blossoms were starting to show and I'm one shade darker than white now for having been in the sun for the afternoon.
Easily the best part of the Wall.... the toboggan you can ride back down the bottom. Not entirely a Chinese cultural experience, but still amazingly fun.
And on the way home, we got a quick trip to see the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium. It's not used for anything these days, but it still looks pretty cool.
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