We only had a few short days in Beijing to cram in a lot of the historical sites we wanted to see. We ended up hitting two major spots: Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China.

Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City

Tiananmen Square sits at the base of the Forbidden City so we got a chance to see it quickly in the morning. Here we are!

The Forbidden City was home to many emperors over the course of China’s long history. It’s an enormous complex that took us nearly two hours to walk around. They offer headsets with English tour information, which John and I normally bypass but Jenna opted to snag one and we are so glad she did. She tuned into the headset and passed along a summarized version to us so we got a pretty basic overview of what we were looking at. Thanks for being our guide, Jenna!

The Great Wall of China

Visiting the Great Wall was high on our bucket list. The wall is enormous and there are many sections for visitors to choose from, several of which are easily accessible from Beijing. We opted to visit the Mutianyu section due to it’s proximity to Beijing (about 2 hours by car) and it’s reputation for being less crowded than it’s more popular but slightly closer neighbor Badaling. We could have attempted public transit or hired a private driver, but instead opted to book a group tour through Viator which was relatively affordable and made planning a breeze.

Getting to the Wall itself was a bit frustrating. Our tour guide Mark picked us up from our hotel at 6:30am and gleefully let us know we had to start early because we had 8 hotel pickups to make! We spent the next hour and a half driving around Beijing to pick up the rest of the group before finally hitting the road for the Wall. Along the way, we stopped at a jade factory to learn about how it’s made and see their showroom. I had heard many of the Great Wall tours made a stop like this but didn’t see it in the description of our tour so I thought we might be off the hook from this tourist trap – not so. It ended up being cool to learn more about this piece of Chinese culture but I would have much preferred to spend that time at the Wall itself.

The Great Wall was spectacular and unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. You can see the wall snaking through the mountains and the towers dotting the hills for miles. Parts of the wall were very steep and the stairs are short, meaning you have to climb slowly. The section we visited has been restored so it’s very sturdy, but we learned that other sections that haven’t been touched are much more crumbly. It was so incredible to see and we were able to hike on top of the wall for about an hour.

Mutianyu is one of two wall sections that offers a chairlift up to the wall and is the only section that offers a toboggan ride down, making it very easily accessible and possible to visit quickly as you can save the time you’d otherwise spend hiking up to and down from the wall. It also makes it very touristy, but we found that we were able to hike a bit away from the crowds. The view from the chairlift up to the Wall was amazing. The toboggan ride down was super fun!

On the way home, our tour stopped at a Tea House for a traditional tea ceremony – another tourist trap that we kind of liked anyway. We got to try five kinds of teas and learn a bit about what they are used for. We had a good chuckle when we realized the same employees of the jade factory were also employees of… the tea house! Definitely a big tour set up but they weren’t pushy and it did afford us the opportunity to learn some more about traditional Chinese culture so we didn’t hate it.

This day has definitely been a highlight of the trip so far and we are so lucky to have seen The Great Wall in person!!