Watch Candyce Stapen on the Today Show, July 5, 2006 Find out about the rewards and pitfalls of adult children traveling with their parents.
About Candyce Stapen Pioneer in family travel; writing about the topic for 20-years. Away.com’s resident family travel expert. Candyce picks the top destinations as well as best hotels, activities and adventures for families in Europe, the Caribbean, the Bahamas, Central America, Mexico and the U.S. Away.com is the content provider for Orbitz. www.away.com. Click on “family.” Author, 27 travel books, including:
Published more than 1600 articles in:
Awards:
Travel Journalists Guild, president www.tjgonline.com |
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| Beijing, China The Yan mountains appear as a series of dramatic crests, and the Great Wall's ancient stones snake their way up and down the green ridge tops. We are about 55 miles north of Beijing. The ramparts, dotted with watchtowers in this section, form a path between the peaks. At times, for brief stretches it's just my husband, two children and me hiking. For the first time in days of exploring Beijing, we hear the wind in the trees as well as chirping birds. Andy, our guide, is right. It's worth the nearly two-hour drive to explore the Great Wall at Mutianyu instead of at Badaling, the most visited section. However, there's a gantlet of vendors to get by before entering the cable car that lifts us to the wall. As we walk by, the merchants wave us over, yelling "good price for you." They're hawking cherries, hats, tablecloths and T-shirts. Even the faux Mongol warrior and his camel posing for photographs try to snare us. By the time we climb the steps to the ramparts and walk through the lookout tower, we see only a few other hikers. A Chinese sentry pacing out his watch hundreds of years ago savored much the same view except for the haze, of course, — a result of Beijing's pollution. Blue-sky images of the Great Wall, we learn, are either rare or doctored on a computer.
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