The Great Wall of China

Awoke in the port of Xingang this morning after Arcadia overnight passage, never even heard her dock. We arranged a wake up call for 07:00 hours to catch our 3 hour coach trip to the Great wall of China, This wonder of the world covers 6000 miles in length and is visible from outer space. Beijing is three hours away, however, this will have to wait for another time. We were all advised that it will be very cold and everyone was prepared with triple layers of clothes. To be honest it was not to bad, a bit like a cold day in Scotland. We were told that over 1600 passengers had booked trips today and left in doubt when we tried to get off the ship in the morning. Once we were through immigration we walked out to see one of the largest collection of new luxury coaches i have seen in a long time, very impressive. On leaving the city, we joined the toll motorways which were stunning 4 lane motorways with new trees being planted in their millions. More importantly, we could not find litter anywhere. The coaches pulled into a beautiful motorway service station for a comfort break. As normal the men walked in and out of their toilets, however the ladies formed an orderly Que as only the Brits do, the picture of ladies standing in line rolling up the trouser legs was hilarious. Word had filtered out that this modern building had no sit down toilets but a hole in the tiled floor, i guess ladies are not as good as men at aiming!. On arrival at the great wall the scenery in the mountain area was breathtaking and the scale of the small section we saw is hard to describe, hopefully some of our pictures will help. The weather was fantastic as everyone had to remove the layers of clothes and walk about in tee shirts soaking up the sun and admiring the scenery. We arrived back on the ship at 19:30 absolutely done in, desperate for a cup of tea and a sandwich. Thankfully commonsense prevailed sandwiches were ordered and two gin and tonics were the order of the day.