By now it appears that fall has arrived in Beijing and with it great weather and clean air. This week we celebrated Moon Festival which gave Philip an extra day off, and we were lucky enough to be invited up to Roberta (his boss) and Ted's Great Wall home. It is situated in an agricultural village that primarily grows walnuts and chestnuts. Now is harvest time for chestnuts, so everywhere men with long bamboo poles were knocking down chestnuts. In the town center sorting machines were operating out-doors, sorting the nuts into three different sizes.

After a lunch of noodles and sauce we walked from the village up to the Great Wall, admiring the blue skies and long vistas of the wall. It was great to take a non-touristy path up, so also no charge and no peddlers!

As night fell we lit a fire in one of the out-door fireplaces, enjoying the full moon and even stars, lately a rare sight.

With Philip back to work, I took an urban bike-ride with my biking group. I started biking with one of my friends about a year ago, and we have now grown to a group of 10 woman from around the world. Today we decided to go to the Olympic Park, a little out from the center of town.We had one woman from Texas who had not biked in Beijing before, but she jumped right in even though the traffic was quite heavy in the beginning along the ring road. We then found some quieter streets, a new park and finally the Olympic park. As it is getting close to the National Celebrations, the city is beautifully decorated with flags and flowers everywhere. A perfect time for biking, and the best way to discover Beijing.