The Great Wall

by
When I was walking around the streets of Beijing yesterday a gentleman walked up to me and said “You are a tourist, the forbidden city is closed, I’ll do a guided tour for you at a temple”. He also asked me where I was from and by this point I had figured that no one has ever heard of Sweden so I went for Los Angeles, California. “Hollywood, you’re from Hollywood!” Damn right I am! 
I didn’t want a tour of a temple, but we arranged for him to come pick me up at 7 am this morning to take me to the Great Wall. It’d cost me US $40 including lunch and I had no idea what to expect, or if he was even going to show up.
7 am approached and a big white bus came to pick me up. We drove around Beijing for two hours to pick up other random lost tourists. I didn’t mind, I got to see Beijing waking up on a Monday morning. Unfortunately for the rest of the tourists, he had told everyone pick up time was 7 am so they had been waiting for two hours and were not so happy. The guide apologized and the annoyed tourists calmed down. But then this happen:

A flat tire! I found the whole situation hilarious, but the Greeks, not so much, they were pissed by now.
A few hours delayed, we eventually made it to Mutianyu. Since we were late we were advised to take the cable cart up to the wall instead of the 2h walking trail. It was by now safe to say the Greeks would not give the poor tour guide any tips at the end of the day.

People likes to build walls, Europe had a wall, Israel has a wall, Trump wants to build a wall, but the early Ming Dynasty build the greatest wall of the all, the Great Wall! This section of the wall was built in the early 1400’s.
I personally believe in building bridges rather than building walls, but that’s just me.

Parts of the wall that’s not renovated or maintained is getting pretty overgrown.

I wonder if the guards were bored on the wall or if they woke up every day thinking, yay, I’m gonna look at that view again today!

I was riding the gondola up with a guy who said he’d take my photo on the wall if I wanted to. I didn’t want a photo of myself, and then later I realized maybe that was a polite way of him asking me to take his photo. We will never know. After a while I thought to myself that maybe I should take a photo of me and send to my mother, she would appreciate that. I tried to set the timer on my phone and this is what came out of it; Selfie like a pro!

When we got back from the wall I was tired but not hungry, but it was still early so I took to the street to wander around for a bit, maybe find a convenient store to buy water and cookies for dinner.
I came across these building, I’m not quite sure what it is, but it looks like a culture center/restaurant.

It seems from these displays that they used to have a jolly good time around here.

Everything is off course being watched my Mao.

These dumplings looked delicious but I just assumed they had a bunch of meat in them and I was to tired to try to explain I only wanted veggies so I passed.

I walked into Lao She Teahouse because they had a big sign and it seemed important. Some nice ladies asked if I wanted tea and recommended I took a stroll around the tea house to look at the fancy stuff they had before sitting down in a tea room.

Once I had enough of looking at fancy tea pots I walked into the tea room and was greeted by a not so nice lady. She looked at me and asked if I wanted tea and said it was “very expensive”, US$60/h for the room plus the tea.
Fine! If you don’t want my money I’ll go back to the cheap streets and have an ice cream from McDonald’s for dinner.