Another day, another death defying trip in a cable car.

We woke up to cooler weather and a light drizzle. After breakfast we weren’t rushing out into it. Millie played and drew for a while. She likes to pull up pictures on her iPad and draw them. She busted this one out of the zootopia characters that I thought was so good.

At about 11 we bit the bullet and called a taxi to take us the 45 minutes to Tianmen Mountain. The vibes were very similar to yesterday: shuttle bus to cable car to walk to escalator to another cable car to walk, etc.

Millie has a new game that she insists we play everywhere called either “you can’t get me” or “I’m gonna get you”. I’m sure you can guess the rules. It is exhausting and has me regretting leaving my sports bra in Europe.

Nick and I laughed at how bad the visibility was. When we got to the top of the mountain we couldn’t see a thing. This has been our luck with mountains so far on this trip, we had cloud cover on table mountain and at the base of Kilimanjaro. Better than extreme heat I guess?

We leaned into the dreariness and got some hot cocoa at the top. There was a postcard writing store which helped us kill 30 minutes. She wrote one to her old class and some friends.

It cleared up a tiny bit and we started our ascent on the “stairway to heaven”. This was 999 stairs directly upwards into the large natural hole in the cliff.

Nick counted as we went and got up to 960. Millie was amazing and didn’t have one single complaint all the way up. She requested a snack break halfway (respect) and then trudged on. I was so impressed by her.

At the top we snacked more and took some photos. The clouds parted a bit to let us see the cave.

Then we took 5 gigantic escalators inside a mountain up even further. From the very top we could see nothing.

We followed the trail to the cable car down. One section was affixed to the side of a cliff. Between the millions of cable cars, walks straight up, suspension bridges, and this… I think I have completed my fear of heights exposure therapy course.

We took a cable car from the very top allllll the way down to the city. This is the longest cable car in the world and took 30 minutes. We went from zero visibility in the clouds to hovering above the city.

I loved being able to look into everyone’s yards and check out their vegetable gardens as we floated above.

We took a taxi back to our hotel, played some more, and then went out for dinner. We had a really good stir fried meal. We were starting to grow tired of how greasy everything is, but this had lots of green vegetables and tasted very fresh.

Overall it was a great day today but Nick and I both noticed how we feel fried. Everywhere in China is sensory overload. There are lots of people so we need to be on guard to keep an eye on Millie. People stare at us constantly. Everything is loud – people shouting, megaphones announcing things, tour guides with loudspeakers, and random people hocking the loudest loogies ever. Food is flavorful and spicy. Bathrooms are smelly. People bump into you in lines and in crowds.

I realize I’m not exactly selling this place as a fun tourist destination. We have genuinely loved it here. But today we reached a breaking point. So we’ve decided to fly to Shanghai, a city of 25 million people, in the morning. Just the rest and relaxation that we need 😅😆