Mar 21st-The Great Wall

This was a crazy good day....as soon as we drove the hour and a half to the north west, the sky was blue and the air pristine....and the Great Wall at Mutianyu was just awesome. Before attempting our climb, we were treated to a hearty bowl of delicious Lamb Curry in a bed of sticky rice....adorned with julienned slivers of carrots and lemon grass and sprigs of the freshest coriander in (of all places) a restaurant called "The School House."The owners were a designer/builder from the States whose work has appeared in Architectural Digest, and his native born Chinese wife. They get back to New York every summer to catch some plays on Broadway. It's a small world afterall! The segment of the Wall we climbed overlooked parts of Mongolia and this day it was tourist-free.

Interestingly enough, the wall wasn't built as one...initially 7 walled and warring City-States each built their own protective walls. It wasn't until much later that the first emperor united these states that the continuation of the Great Wall happened over many more years as a protective barrier against the Mongols. The irony of this all is that as I huffed and puffed my way up the last 32 nearly vertical steps in our segment who was awaiting my arrival but two broken-english speaking Mongolian Chinese peasants selling Diet Coke and candy bars!!! The Wall has been a wonderful source of tourist revenue out in these beautiful "sticks!"