I really hate trying to come up with a clever post title. So, sorry they're so boring, but the stress of trying to be witty and funny is really getting to me. 

Anyway, Day 4 was quite the long day, but pretty awesomely memorable. The itinerary for the day was: The Great Wall (TGW), lunch, Jade Factory and the Ming Tombs. So as you could imagine you're about to get a serious photo storm.

Here you see our first view of TGW. At this point we are told we have the option of hiking to the top or taking the ski lift up. This particular part of TGW has these awesome alpine sides you can ride down so we knew we were doing that. They told us it was 60RMB ($10) to ride it down and an extra 20RMB to ride the lift up. So I think, "well it makes sense to ride it up because then it's only 40RMB both ways". I completely forgot who I was married to though, and he of course wanted to hike up it. So we did.... the picture below shows the wall and the elevation we started at... 


This building pretty much marks the start of the long insane hike to the top of TGW. It's a good thing I learned how to fake smile for pictures during my days as a Walt Disney World intern, because I was not at all excited for our journey. 



This is pretty much what the entire trip up looked like... a long staircase leading to the sun. The view down wasn't any more hopeful either as you can see by the picture after this one.




After every flight of stairs there was one of these little picnic table alcoves. My guess is because if you're making the hike you really should pack a meal to sustain you until you get up to TGW.


More depressing stairs


Getting slightly closer... I will admit it's a pretty breathtaking view


The wall is finally in sight!
 We finally made it up onto the wall, only to be greeted by about a million more stairs. Having now spent 2 weeks here, I've decided that the Chinese people stay so thin because the entire country is COVERED IN STAIRS.







Once again, because of who I married, we had to set off to get to the tallest point of the wall that we could reasonable get to in the time frame we were allotted. To give you an idea about the distance we went, look at the map below. We went from Tower 8 to somewhere between Tower 15 and 16. Then, to get to our awesome alpine slides we had to head back to Tower 6. We were up on the wall for 2.5 hours I believe.

 In each Tower we kept stopping inside because there was shade and the most beautiful of breezes. 




All day I felt like Hugh Grant in Love Actually. "I don't know what to do with my hands"

Didn't understand what this sign meant, at all



So now the picture of how high up we climbed. See that top tower up on the Hill wayyyy behind us? Yeah that's Tower 15.


I was trying to give perspective to the flights of stairs we were hiking up. If you look very closely on the left of the picture is a blue spot on TGW. That is Chad's shirt. 


This was a cute little village nestled in the middle of a bunch of mountains. TGW actually goes along the ridge of those far mountains too.. so they are surrounded by it. 








This is from the top of where we ended up. You can see TGW just stretching as far as can be, snaking up the mountain. 


And this, besides being super cool mountains, is probably the most artistic shot I've ever taken with a camera in my life. Like it's frame on the wall good. I was really (and still am) proud of myself. Seriously, look at the rest of these pictures, you should be proud of me too!






Remember that shot we took from the bottom of the wall looking up? Well this is pretty much the reverse of it.


Now we get to the alpine slides. Seriously whoever came up with this idea is a genius, we wanted to video it but we maybe forgot our camera wrist strap in the US, so we didn't want to risk it. This is the station you get on at. 


We wanted you to get a good idea of how the slide looked, so we took this kinda lame picture of the track.


This is the slide. It's really quite simple. If you lean forward, you slow down and if you lean back, you speed up.


This is Chad's artistic shot of the slide and the slides. I *think* that person on the slide might be this guy from our group who we were not fond of. He was never quiet. I don't recall a time when he wasn't talking. Except for when he was in the elevator with us (I think our dislike was somewhat apparent) and he didn't talk. He seemed really uncomfortable with it. And I feel like if I'm complaining about the amount someone talks that just gives you a great idea as to how talkative he was.


So the slide+ a skirt... not my best idea. 




Sadly, because we were trying to avoid the guy I mentioned above we let this father and his 3 grown up daughters go in front of us. That was a dumb idea because the last of the daughters to go down was a giant wimp and did not go fast at all... I spent the bulk of my slide experience making sure I didn't get too close to her Dad who was also stuck behind her. By the end of the ride (approx. 5 minutes) I think she had about 10 people stacked up behind her. I did get a few fast sections in though and it was pretty awesome. Chad was behind me and managed to snap a few pics of me going down. Because I am leggy (read: I didn't exactly fit in the length of the slide) and the wimpy Italian in front of me, it felt like I spent 5 minutes doing crazy crunches and squats. It was amazingly fun though and I think that if you make it to TGW you need to go to this section so you can do the slides. 




After lunch we packed it all up and went to a Jade Factory. To be honest it was cool, but I thought it would have been more of a factory and less of a giant jade store. I was very wrong. These next two pictures are people hard at work carving, washing (guy 1) and polishing (guy 2) jade to make the stuff sold in the store. We were told that this is the largest jade factory so that's pretty cool.



This is a TON of white Jade slabs just laying around


This guy is cool. He has the body of a horse, the head of a dragon, the foot of something and I think the horn of a unicorn. (Give me a break I had just hiked TGW, I was a little tired) I believe you can see that his mouth is open. What you can't see is that he has no bumhole. The symbolism here is that if you have him, you're blessed with money coming into your home, but not going out.


This is a Jade Family Ball. You can't really see but it has a couple more smaller balls inside that are just slightly smaller than the one above it. Each layer is suppose to represent a generation of a family. Showing that it can never be undone (you can't get the smaller balls out) and it keeps growing. 


Last stop of the tour was The Ming Tombs.These are pretty darn intense. To be honest when we had to walk up some stairs during the tour I almost cried.

This is where people would place their offerings to the emperor. 


Inside this huge building is a giant statue of the emperor, which you will see in a few more pictures.


Only the emperor was allowed to walk on this part in the middle, hence the mini-fence

The Emperor himself

The ceiling of this building was pretty awesome. It was super intricate, you know especially since it was built sometime between 1368-1644. AKA before anyone (besides the indigenous people) knew America existed.


 This topical map show the layout of the entire thing, where the wife and concubines and whatnot were buried.


 And this one shows the sweet setup the Emperor had. We are currently in that huge building that's kinda in the middle. 


This gate is symbolic of entering the land of the dead. If you walk through it, when you come back you need to say "I'm coming back" twice in Chinese. If you didn't you would leave your soul with the dead.

Pretty sure this is where Sirius Black died...

This is my reaction to having to walk up more stairs



This is basically the emperor's tombstone


Cool story about these bricks. They made each person who made them carve their name into the brick. That way if it crumbled or broke they knew who to go get to fix it (and presumably beat into a bloody mess)

This is a single brick

This as well

Let's just say the rest of these pictures are bricks and be done with it


After all this we went back to our hotel. We were pretty exhausted and in serious need of a shower. It was this night that we got our room changed to the big one with the big bed. It was quite fancy haha