Howie here...
We were picked up at our fantastic hotel (Shangri-La in Beijing) by our intrepid tour guide and his sidekick driver on January 9 and were off (!) to see the great wall of China. The weather was much better than we expected (as was the case for most of our stay in China), and we were very excited to see one of the marvels of the world.
It took about an hour to get to the site where you can hike, and we were immediately set upon by the vultures/vendors, who were trying to sell the typical garbage like a picture on a great wall mug, magnets, certificates stating that indeed, we did climb the great wall, yadda yadda yadda.
Despite their best efforts to aggravate us, the site was pretty spectacular. Arifa and I hiked ahead of her parents, and we made it to tower 8 at Badaling, the highest point in the immediate area. Most of it was fairly to very steep, but everyone seemed to be having a really good time of it. There were a couple Japanese folks who were apparently trying to run up the wall (unsuccessfully, I might add), and there was a chain-smoking Chinese guy who kept passing us between lighting stops. It was unreal. A couple Chinese guys asked me if I would pose for them at the top, furthering my new plan of becoming a Chinese superstaaaaahhh.
Arifa's parents made it to tower 7, an impressive feat, and we met at a gift store for coffee after a couple hours of hiking. It was nice to warm up after being out in the cold, but again, the weather was much warmer than we expected.
