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Day
2 (May 11, 2026) Mutianyu
Before
We
have booked transport to Mutianyu that will pick us up at the hotel at
9:00 AM. The plan is to spend the rest of the day exploring that part
of the Great Wall until we return in the afternoon. It is possible that
we will stop on the way back to see the Olympic Park.
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After
Before going for breakfast, the driver we have for
today has already contacted me via WeChat to verify the names and
passport numbers he has, and he asks us our preference for going up and
down for the wall, since he is going to buy the tickets before picking
us up. I explain to him that the plan is to go up to Tower 14 by cable
car and and we will decide how to come down from Tower 4 once there. He
tells us the price is 200 yuan for each admission with cable car ticket.
We
go down for breakfast a few minutes after 8:00 AM and enjoy the modest
but well-stocked buffet. There is no cutlery, only chopsticks, and they
have both local and Western food. We finish just in time to go up to
the room and come back down ready for today's trip. The driver lets us
know via WeChat that some roadworks are preventing him from entering
the hutong, so he is waiting for us right at the entrance, which we
have to reach on foot.
It
is 9:10 AM when we set off toward our destination. Getting out of the
capital, with the usual traffic of a large city, takes about 45
minutes. Afterward, we pass through rural landscapes with large bridges
for the elevated train tracks. Everything that has been built looks
brand new.
Our
driver leaves the car in a typical underground parking lot, and when we
go up to the surface, we find ourselves at the entrance to Mutianyu. It
is 11:00 AM, and we arrange to meet in that same spot when I message
him via WeChat to let him know we are ready to go. He does not give us
any actual tickets, instead, he explains how access works for most
places here: the tickets are linked to our passports, and we will enter
the site by showing our passports to the scanners at the access control
gates.
But first, we explore the place where we are, which has a large map of the area like the one at the top of this page.
We
enter Mutianyu around 11:00 AM and find an area filled with gift shops
and restaurants, which we have to walk through to reach the shuttle
buses that will take us up to the cable car station.
We
spend about half an hour moving slowly in the queue to be assigned a
bus. The line moves quickly because there are many buses, but there are
a lot of people waiting to catch them.
The
bus ride is short, and then we have to walk up a slope that leads to
the cable car, but first, we must pass through a ticket checkpoint that
controls access to the cable cars.
We
get onto the cable car, which does not stop, and head toward the wall,
which we can see for the first time through the large windows of the
cabin.
Upon
leaving the cable car, we still have some stairs to climb to reach a
sort of square where the entrance to the wall is located. It is around
1:00 PM when we step onto the wall, meaning it took us about two hours
from the moment we entered the main site until we actually reached the
monument.
This
is the most crowded area, as some only take a few photos and head back,
and because, although the section we will walk is to the left, where
there is an exit about 1.5 km away, there is another section to
the right that goes up the mountain but is a dead end, meaning you have
to come back to this point.
The
first tower we cross is Tower 14, and from there, we continue walking
down and passing through the following towers as the scenery gradually
changes, with more of the wall appearing ahead in the distance and an
increasing amount of the wall snaking upward behind us.
The
end of this trecking is Tower 6, where the exit is located, offering
three ways to get back down: a slideway, a cableway, or a walking path.
We
choose the cableway and bought the tickets right there. There is a long
queue for the slide, while we don't have any waiting time with the
cableway and we are able to enjoy the view as we head back to the area
where the bus dropped us off, about two hours after stepping onto the
wall.
We
walk down the slope we climbed earlier and board the bus, the line for
which is much shorter for the return journey now. It drops us off in
the restaurant area, which is exactly what we are looking for at this
time, since it is already past 3:30 PM. We choose a restaurant with a
Chinese name that serves food from many countries. I order a white
ramen that I had seen in a photo at the entrance, and Eva orders a
portion of dumplings and another of prawns. The total came to less than
200 yuan.
Around
4:30 PM, I send a message to the driver saying we are ready to leave,
and when we reach the area in front of the entrance where we had agreed
to meet, he is waiting to accompany us to the parking lot and begin our
journey back to Beijing.
Once
in the streets of the capital, we realize he was not taking us straight
to the hotel because we started seeing Olympic facilities. He stops for
us at the famous "Bird's Nest" stadium so we could take some photos.
From
where we are standing, we can hear the music from the concert taking
place inside the stadium. We buy a couple of bottles of flavored water
from the vending machines to refresh ourselves and, this time for real,
head toward the hotel.
We
arrive after dark and turn in for the night without going out again, as
we need to rest and get everything ready to check out of the hotel
early tomorrow morning.
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