The Great Wall and Olympic Venues!

We are in the "Green group" for our trip. Today we loaded our bus for our visit to the Great Wall. We had a 90 minute drive on a windy mountain road until we arrived at the Cable Car. We took a brief cable car ride to the top entrance to the wall. Although not sunny, the weather was warm and there was no wind so we were able to really enjoy our 90 minute walk. We could have made it to the top of the hill, but we were having so much fun taking photos that we ran out of time. We noticed that many Chinese groups were taking "Silly" photos, so the girls have a silly Great Wall photo too! We have seen photos of the Great Wall so crowded that you would think you were in a train station. We were very lucky that were very few people there today. We took the cable car back down to the bottom and had to "walk the gauntlet" of shops to get back to the bus. We wanted to buy a few souvenirs, but I am not very good at "bargaining" and the vendors were very aggressive. We did purchase a few things, but Diana was ready to head back to the bus when our path was blocked by several aggressive business owners. We laughed at the end because all of us purchased similar items and we all paid different prices...we think we all paid too much! We had lunch at a Cloisonne factory store and really enjoyed shopping there since the prices were fixed :). We found some fun ornaments and teapots. After lunch we briefly walking around the Olympic venues and toured The Bird's nest! The square is immense! They only recently opened these venues for public tours. We were surprised that there were no English instructions at these venues. They also did not take credit cards! The other thing that surprised us was how many police officers are in the streets! We are getting ready to go out to dinner with our group soon.