After a day of light activities yesterday, I was ready for a day of vigorous hiking today on the Great Wall. I signed up for a small 6-person tour through China Highlights. My guide picked me up at my hotel around 7:30 am and we drove to Sanlitun to pick up the other two hikers. It was going to be a three-person tour group.

I chose the 4-hours hike from Jiankou, which is the more broken down part of the Great Wall, to Mutianyu, which was the most beautiful and restored part of the Great Wall. As we hiked, each of us talked about our lives. The tour guide told us that there weren’t that many tour hikers in Beijing and that they would have to work every week, which was why many of them had knee problems. I was already tired hiking up to the Great Wall; I wondered how the tour hikers do it. The other two hikers were from France; one was currently working in Beijing while the other was visiting his friend. The one working in Beijing has married a Chinese woman and has a cute baby daughter.

​We ate Subway sandwiches for lunch after we finished hiking down.