Early start to the morning, had to get the room packed up, and be ready to go at 7:30am to drive to Great Wall. We were pretty much on schedule, and made a stop on the way at the Olympic Village area, from the 2008 summer games. Just snapped a few pictures of the stadiums and such from the outside. The sun was blazing through our window at 6:30am, so by the time we got to the olympic area at 8:30 it was HOT!! All we kept saying was how glad we were it had been cloudy the last few days!
The drive to the section of the Wall we went to was about 1.5 hrs. Alice was with us once again, pointing out the sights on the way. It was nice to see the "suburbs" of Beijing, which really felt more like farmland and villages to me. Very pretty though.
We took a chair lift up to the wall. You could walk, but why walk when you can ride, and have a 9 yr old with you! It was about 97 and full sun, so we knew we had limited time energy up there. The section we were on was built around 600 years ago, and has been renovated many times. It was 2K long, with several guard houses along the way. Pretty amazing to be up on something like that, and beautiful views, as we were in the lush hills.
We hiked around for about an hour up there - it's very steep, though, up and down. So yes, you can imagine there was some complaining from Sophie. Poor thing, her face was as red as a tomato! But she hung in there, and we walked quite a bit of it.
Got to ride down a toboggan/luge thing, back to the bottom, so that was a cool ending!
Off to lunch (chinese, again delish!), and then about 1 hr ride to the airport for our 4:30 flight. Our bags were a bit too heavy for the domestic flight (50lbs allowed for intl, but only 45 or so for domestic). But the man was nice and let us through without paying extra. The flight was delayed about an hour, so we didn't arrive at our Holiday Inn in Hefei till about 8:30, and we were bushed!
Jane is the new guide - she picked us up at airport, and will be organizing all our adoption "stuff". It's so exciting to be done with the touristy part, and get the best part of this trip! She seems sweet, and is all business. There are 6 families that will be at Gotcha Day with us tomorrow. 2 others adopting kids from Bengbu, who she thinks are Cora's age!! And they are all staying at the Holiday Inn! So that will be nice to have some familiar faces around.
We had some last minute paperwork things to do, and then it was off to bed. We leave for the Civil Affairs office at 8:30 tomorrow morning to meet Cora!!
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