Wanna go to Starbucks?
Yesterday we had a rather grey and hazy day in Changping. With driver's license in hand and car out of the shop, Randy offered to drive us to the closest Starbucks for a treat. That would be the Starbucks at the Great Wall.
We had planned to just walk around Badaling looking at some of the many monuments rather than actually scale the Wall. When we started our drive north, the haze veiled the mountains beautifully, but we would rather a day with better visibility to get up on the Wall again. However....
Just north of town, pretty hazy
Just south of the wall, still overcast, but much clearer.
Okay, twist my arm, I told him. Let's take a walk along the Great Wall. This time we went a different direction than we had on Easter.
No orcs today. The climb itself was fun enough.
This picture reminds me of the A.A. Milne poem, except the line in this case is "Halfway down the Wall is a stair where I sit"
(This is almost an earworm. Take it away, Robin.)
Will we get bored of this place? Impossible!
For me, it is amazing how on the Wall I'm so conscious of how thick and tall and solid it is. But then, looking out at the surrounding mountains, I'm in awe of how much more like a delicate ribbon it looks in the distance.
I think I found a very distant Ambrose cousin here. While a Chinese tourist was taking a picture of the kids, I was taking a picture of her taking a picture of them, and her friend was taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of them. Follow?
Note Brigid's feet. When we left the house it was pretty warm out, so I didn't have socks on her. I did grab a hat and sweater not knowing how long we would be out, but I thought I already had a pair of socks in my diaper bag. The better visibility in Badaling was definitely because of cooler air and wind, so she did need the sweater and hat. The problem was, though, that I only had ONE sock in my bag. It was a good thing I even put that one sock on her. Many, many, many women approached us about the bare feet thing, and so we were able to point to her one socked foot and shrug. It wasn't totally untrue that I didn't know where it was. It probably was a little misleading to ask people if they see it to let us know. But instead of people yelling at me, they laughed.
We had planned to just walk around Badaling looking at some of the many monuments rather than actually scale the Wall. When we started our drive north, the haze veiled the mountains beautifully, but we would rather a day with better visibility to get up on the Wall again. However....
Just north of town, pretty hazy
Just south of the wall, still overcast, but much clearer.
Okay, twist my arm, I told him. Let's take a walk along the Great Wall. This time we went a different direction than we had on Easter.
No orcs today. The climb itself was fun enough.
This picture reminds me of the A.A. Milne poem, except the line in this case is "Halfway down the Wall is a stair where I sit"
(This is almost an earworm. Take it away, Robin.)
Will we get bored of this place? Impossible!
For me, it is amazing how on the Wall I'm so conscious of how thick and tall and solid it is. But then, looking out at the surrounding mountains, I'm in awe of how much more like a delicate ribbon it looks in the distance.
I think I found a very distant Ambrose cousin here. While a Chinese tourist was taking a picture of the kids, I was taking a picture of her taking a picture of them, and her friend was taking a picture of me taking a picture of her taking a picture of them. Follow?
Note Brigid's feet. When we left the house it was pretty warm out, so I didn't have socks on her. I did grab a hat and sweater not knowing how long we would be out, but I thought I already had a pair of socks in my diaper bag. The better visibility in Badaling was definitely because of cooler air and wind, so she did need the sweater and hat. The problem was, though, that I only had ONE sock in my bag. It was a good thing I even put that one sock on her. Many, many, many women approached us about the bare feet thing, and so we were able to point to her one socked foot and shrug. It wasn't totally untrue that I didn't know where it was. It probably was a little misleading to ask people if they see it to let us know. But instead of people yelling at me, they laughed.
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