Day 3 - The Great Wall

Day 3 started off with a short drive to the outskirts of Beijing where we visited the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum (the Sacred Way). This area is home to the tombs of several Ming Dynasty tombs but we just walked along the path that is protected by several statues. It was a very quiet and relaxing change from the pace of the city.
After lunch we visited the Great Wall of China which was even more impressive than I expected. The section we visited was built on top of a series of mountains and we took a ski lift just to reach the top, so I can only imagine the difficulties they had building the wall. Though I must say, the wall probably killed more Chinese people during construction than it saved by its existence.
In the evening we had a bit of time to kill before catching our train to Tibet so our driver was nice and drove us to the Bird's Nest where we got to see the home of last year's Olympics. With the Water Cube located right next door and a large open space between the two it would have been an extremely exciting place to be last August. It was also interesting to see the large groups of Chinese tourists who are still visiting the area that brought their country to the front of the world's stage last year.