Friday, June 17
We couldn't arrange our flight from Yichang to Osaka without an overnight lay-over in Beijing so we made the best of it. We spent the night at a cheap, forgettable airport hotel and met a guide at 6:30 in the morning for a trip to the Great Wall. We'd arranged with the Chinese tour agency to have the same guide we had in Beijing with Leslie and Cady in April. David seemed happy to see us again and shared pictures of the trip he took to Taiwan in the spring. He didn't make it down to Kaohsiung but he said that he asked about us on the streets of Taipei, although no one there seemed to know who we were. :)

We went to an area of Badaling that's further up the mountains than where we went last time. It's really steep and apparently not many foreigners go there. But plenty of Chinese do. At the gate you can choose to go left, along with pretty much everyone else, or right, where you can be nearly all alone. We started out towards the left because David suggested we go that way, but quickly turned around and went to the right.

The gate

Lee hikes up and up...

...and reaches the top!

But there's always one more hill to climb, one more tower to reach.

It was good to go to the Wall instead of sitting around the airport for an extra six hours but it wasn't nearly as much fun as April. You only get one first time and I enjoyed sharing that with Lee, but it just wasn't the same today.

The rest of the day was spent flying to Osaka, this time internationally on ANA instead of China's domestic airline, yay. Once we arrived in Osaka we had a rare travel glitch and ended up on the slow train instead of the express from the airport into the city. We make it to our hotel just fine but it took way longer than necessary.

Our hotel is more of a traditional guest house than a hotel, which means tatami mats on the floor instead of a western mattress and pillows that are more like sandbags than true pillows. A good night's sleep will make us all rosy and ready to explore a new city in a new country.