Beijing 2010

Finally, some pictures from our trip to Beijing back in May! This was such a wonderful trip, and I am so glad that we were able to visit there while Judy and Jim were with us. I said from the time we moved to China that I couldn't leave the country without having visited the Great Wall, and we got it in just under the wire! We were incredibly lucky with the weather while we were there, and the pictures here show just how beautiful a day it was. We visited the MuTianYu portion of the wall, which was about 90 minutes outside of Beijing, and it was well worth the drive to see this beautiful place.

This is the view from the first lookout point we got to. I guess it should go without saying, but the views were truly breathtaking...

The views weren't the only thing that took our breath... there was A LOT of hiking up and down and up and down and up and down again!

We ran into these strangers on the hike...

And here are a few pictures of me with the boys a few times we stopped for breaks...

It was such a beautiful day, you can see we were all still smiling even with all the hiking!

We did decide to cheat and take alternate transport down from the peak to the parking area. (Actually Judy and Jim hiked the whole thing!) This picture shows my feet hanging over a ski-lift type transport which Ryan and I took down, and below me are Greg and Conor riding down on a toboggan!

Back in Beijing proper, here is a picture of the whole group getting ready to tour a Hutong, an old housing area in the heart of Beijing.


An here we are at the Olympic site, the buildings are massive! You can't see it really well, but those little ant-like objects on the side of the "bubble" building are actually people who are rapelling down to clean the side. The second picture is a close up of the action.

And here we are at Tiananmen Square, where Judy was very popular with the young tourists!