Beijing (cont.)

Beijing Day 3.

We were awoken by the sound of our room phone ringing. Assuming that it was the wake up call that I had requested, Brendan answered the phone. In fact, it was not the wake up call, but our tour guide coming to pick us up for our trip. The wake up call never happened and we were late. Such was the beginning of the day for our trip to the Great Wall of China.

As we rushed to get ready, I took a quick jaunt downstairs to grab some food. I met up with the tour guide and told him that we were running behind schedule because of our non-existent call. He seemed to be pretty understanding. I went in the breakfast room to grab some croissants for the road. As I was buttering them up, a short old Englishman proceeded to make fun of me for being tall. Being already slightly perturbed I ignored him and ran back out to the lobby. When I got to the tour guide he suggested that if I wanted a wake up call, I have to ask for one from the front desk. I'm thinking to myself, "Yes, I know that tiny Chinese man, I am not an idiot." He then told me that the front desk clerk said I was lying and had never asked for a wake-up call.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not a morning person, that on top of everything else that happened was enough to have Brendan find me yelling at the front desk lady while she sat dumbfounded behind the desk. The interlude was awkward enough that I didn't approach the desk for the entire rest of our trip.

Word to the wise, don't ask hotel clerks to give you a wake up call. Brendan and I have NEVER had them actually call us. This resulted in us nearly missing a morning flight in Malaysia, and holding up a giant group of people in China. Great. I don't know why I always believe that they will actually call us.

The trip to the wall was uneventful. The guide was giving us his cheesy, History-of-China-and-The-Great-Wall-speech most of the way there. I tend to despise guided tours and especially tour guides. I don't like fake happy people and I like my freedom. But that day, the simplest way to get to Wall was through him. We took a gondola up to the top of the mountain range and climbed all over the section of the wall were on. We even went a bit off of the beaten path to a section of the wall that was crumbling and not open to tourists. It was exhausting, but fun. I was really looking forward to going back down though, there is a luge that you can ride down. Not made of ice, but a long metal slide from top to bottom. Of course, being the day that God decide to hate Kelly, the luge was closed for repairs. On the way back down to our van Brendan and I bought some dried mangos and walnuts from a street vendor lady. Brendan's mangos were good, but my walnuts tasted like chlorine. Such is life.

After the Great Wall we visited the ming tombs, an underground burial spot for Emperors and Empresses (Emperi?) It was very...Eh.

On to the jade museum and lunch! Eh..

At the end of the tour the guide handed out review forms to everyone. Brendan wrote my name on it and suggested that I put that he was a "fair" tour guide, rather than an excellent. (Due to the fact that he may or may not have been drunk for the second half of our trip.) After I handed it in, the dude has the nerve to confront me about his review. I informed him that I wasn't in the mood to argue. He was probably jealous because I rated the insanely agressive van driver "excellent."

That night we ate some pretty awesome dumplings at a random hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Nothing like what a tour guide would take you to.