China - Great Wall

The Great Wall of China was our first tourist stop. Paula decided to take us to this part of the wall that is a little less visited than other parts where they built it up for the Olympics. This part of the wall was awesome! We were there at an off season, so it wasn’t ‘wall to wall’ people which was nice. From the parking lot we walked through the market at the base of the mountain, Paula told us to just look forward and not stop and talk, we would do that when we came back down. Two years ago my mom and dad came to visit here, my dad was so sick and week that it took every bit of energy for him to walk and at times be carried just to the foot of where you could enter the Great Wall. He wanted to so much to be on the Great Wall of China. He died less than a year later.
The wall was quite amazing. Some of the things I thought were interesting in the construction are the steps. There was NO consistency in them. Some steps were over a foot high others were just and inch or two high. The view was spectacular even at this time of year before all the trees have gotten their new leaves. It would be easy to spend an entire day walking along this part of the Wall, since Paula has been here before she showed us the view but had us walk the easier part. We were all thankful for that!
As we were stopping and taking pictures along the way we had the privilege of meeting a nice young couple from Switzerland. He took some picture of our group, which was nice to have some of us all together. We crossed path with them a few times.
On the way home we stopped at a potter shop. The owner met us as we drove up, remembering Paula she knew Paula liked to see the workshop (not open to the public) so that is where she took us first. It was a relatively small building with 12 or so painters working. It was interesting to walk around and get a close look at what they were doing. None of them spoke to us J I’m sure we seemed weird to them. Then we went into their warehouse, so to speak. Each of us bought something and we were on our way.