Badaling has really been given a bad reputation for being too "touristy" in the adventure travel guides, like Rough Guide and Lonely Planet. Yes, there are a lot of little shops and stalls. Yes, there are many big bus tours. Yes, it's difficult to find a place where you can commune with the Wall in solitude. Yes, there is a kitschy place where you can dress in a costume and have your picture taken (with a horse or camel, too). However, I hope that given a choice between travelling to Badaling to see the Wall and not seeing it at all, people will go to Badaling.

From the entrance, you are offered two choices of a climb: steep and REALLY steep. I've called this an "athletic" sight because the better your shape, the more you'll be able to take in. We chose the steep side, and I climbed about half-way up before deciding I'd gone far enough to get a good view. Some of my classmates made it much further (the panoramic picture of the wall below was taken by one of them -- thanks, Mirek!)

Having climbed as far as I wanted and taken some pictures, I headed back down to stop in the shops. I spent about $20, and bought Chinese outfits for my three nieces, a cloisonne vase, a set of wooden dogs and a wooden dragon. Bargain with the merchants -- they'll often come down as much as 50% from the original asking price.

Our tour guide dispelled a long-held belief about the Great Wall, which is that it can be seen from the moon with the naked eye. The Great Wall is the only man made structure that can be seen from space with the naked eye. However, space starts 50 miles from the Earth's surface; looking at the Wall from the Moon would be like looking at a piece of string from 100 miles away!

Making a recommendation on this is tough, as I can't help but be influenced a bit by the guide books panning of the sight. If you are interested in a less touristy area of the Great Wall and have the time to travel further from major cities to see it, by all means do so. But do NOT leave China without visiting it somewhere.

To see the wall you can take a buss (very cheap) or rent a taxi for a full day (should be no more than $20-30). The drive is about 1 hour back and forth. The driver might expect that you eat lunch with him, at least you should offer to buy him some food.

There are different starting points to see the wall. We choose the see the south end which is the most popular and accessable from Beijing. There are other options which I have heard should be even more beatiful, but we were satisfied with what we saw.

Words can not describe the view but basically it is a very broad wall where you can walk on top and this gives you a beatiful view of the landscape.

The wall was used the protect the Chinese people agenst their enemies and you should try to imagine being a soldier gaurding the wall hundreds of years ago against an unknown enemy.

You need to be in good condition to get the full experience from the wall. You will see the most rewarding sights when you walk for at least a few miles.

The Great Wall was crowed with Chinese tourist and foreign tourists. The entrance was divided into the course which goes to the south (right hand), and the course which goes to the north (left hand). Although we took the north course, it was a good walking course. You have to go up the steep slopes. It was tired but the higher you climb, the better scenery you can get. The view from the Great Wall was like a Chinese landscape painting. It was great. I was surprised to know I was up as high as the altitude of 800m soon after we started climbing. I admired such a huge construction made so many years ago. For the elder person, the north course might make them exhausted. As my husband is a tough guy, he challenged the south course as well. The way is milder. You can feel as if the Great Wall continued ahead forever.

An amazing sight to see, even with everyone that has gone to Beijing and went to the great wall, I am sure it is quite a different experience for each person. I went to the ancient section which took about 2 hours to get to...but very well worth it, there was not another soul around, except for my guide and we hiked up the side of the wall for about 1.5 miles, and everywhere you looked the wall spanned, amazing to think that this was built so long ago.

The Great Wall can be viewed from space. But from the parking lot, one has to snake through meters of street vendors anxious to sell souvenirs before you get to walk on the wall with hundreds of tourists, have your photo taken and hurry back to the tour bus.