Jinshanling Great Wall

To further add to our confusion the weather this weekend was extremely nice: hardly any pollution.

Foodz from the roadz:







If they had not grossly overcharged us, I would have given the address and highly recommended this place.

Hobbies

It turns out that we share many hobbies with Amanda.

First of all food of course. Not only making it and eating it...





... but also catching it.

Second, photography.





Especially when combined with number 3 and 4: hiking and sightseeing.





We are not the only ones who best enjoy the scenery of the Great Wall through a lens.



Finally, rock climbing.



This was actually an easy part.

Here is a picture of Anke after she involuntarily free climbed a much harder part of the Great Wall.

Jiankou Great Wall

When Ellen was here we rented a car and visited the Great Wall near Jiankou.



We not only took a lot of pictures, but also a lot of pictures of us were taken (especially of Ellen, I wonder whether her red hair had anything to do with this).





And then it was time for an early dinner.



This is specialty number 1: fresh trout (we had two).



Specialty number 2: wild herbs.



Trout again, in a different stage of its being. (After which it was no more.)



Some barbecued meatz.



Unspecified Chinese food.



Sweet potato slices.



A little breadz.



And the other trout grilled to perfection.

By the way, Ellen already made 5 posts about her visit: her first lunch in Beijing, zhajiangmian, duck, street food and a post on dumplings! Check them out to see some embarrassing pictures of A and F!

Rural Weekend IV

The last stop in our rural weekend was a tiny pretty village next to a lake, that we stumbled on by following the signs to the Inn of Exploration that we subsequently spent the night at. According to their website, "the guestrooms are equipped according to the standard of 5-star hotels" which is true, if you normally stay in 5-star hotels without heating and with a wooden plank covered by some cloth for a bed. Nonetheless, we really liked the Inn of Exploration, and managed to sleep for 13 hours on our wooden planks.

The village was really lovely. It was the first time we saw this:



It is a watch tower from the great wall (you could see a crumbling part of the wall not far from it) which was completely taken over by and perhaps also inhabited by the people of the house built against it.



We spent some time sitting in the beer garden the owner of the Inn of Exploration had created. Entertainment was provided in the form of the scharensliep (knife sharpener?) who came riding by in his beautiful suit shouting out unintelligible things in a hoarse voice.







The owner of the Inn of Exploration had about a thousand really blunt knives lying around (one of which was rusted through in several places). The scharensliep sharpened them for just 40 euro cents each. He also sold knives, and we are now the proud owners of a new Chinese cook's knife, which was already sharp before he spent five minutes sharpening it for us.



This morning, we left this little idyll after a hearty rural breakfast.

And now, we are all ready to begin the battle with our students! But we won't tell you about it until our award winning teacher friend has told us in the comments what he thinks will happen. Tuncay!?!
(Thanks by the way for the comments so far! We are very interested to see that all our Dutch commenters think (e) is most likely!)

Rural Weekend II

We were aiming to go to Jiankou Great Wall, which is supposedly very rugged and wild (just like we are, says F). This turned out to be a bit hard to find. The directions in our book mentioned a trout farm (they are everywhere!) of a certain name, which we could not find.

In the end, we just took a random narrow dust road which surely wasn't the right one, drove through a little village, some more dust road, and finally, we hit a trout farm and a cute outdoor restaurant next to a couple of trout ponds. We thought it would do.

So, we got a bed in one of the two hotels (and not just a bed! A western toilet and hot shower too! We did not know they had those in the rural lands outside Beijing. The hotel also featured some night lamps which started billowing out black smoke a little while after we turned them on. Very exciting stuff.) We spent a wonderful, albeit very cold, night with an open window, listening to the waterfall that supplied the trout pond outside with fresh water.







Early the next morning, we looked for some hiking opportunity. Way up above the hotel, we could see a very steep mountain with some watchtower on top. We did not expect to be able to go there, but started out on a little stroll through the terraced farmland. Shortly after, the trail became insanely steep. We kept huffing and puffing our way up. Not much of a view to reward us for our efforts, because, even though the sky above was bright blue, the pollution was pretty bad.



We kept going however, and actually made it up to the wall. It was beautiful! By far the best part of the wall we have seen so far!



It looked plenty rugged and wild to us. We looked it up later, and it was indeed Jiankou Great Wall.









The last photo features A pointing out in typical Chinese girl-y fashion how high and steep the climb was up to the wall (which you can see on the top of the ridge if you look very carefully). By the way, isn't the story that the wall was built to keep out invaders? With the idea that they would not be able to get their supplies and horses and such across the wall??? So, ehhh, you think the wall is what kept them from crossing this ridge here?

Hiking

In spite of not feeling 100%, we went hiking on the Great Wall on Saturday with BJ Hikers.







It was as wonderful as I feel bad now, the day after.

The Great Wall Rerererererererevisited

After lunch, we drove on to Jinshanling where we started our 3 hour hike on the wall to Simatai (we did the same route with Uri in the fall).

At the end of the route there is a little restaurant slash guesthouse with 3 rooms, where we took up almost 67% of the space. Very friendly people, good food, and beautiful surroundings --- you can see the wall all around you.