Jam Packed Day in Xian

Today’s itinerary was packed full of things to do in Xian. We met at 9:00 in the lobby of the hotel, only to find out that we needed our passports to get into the history museum that we were going to. I actually heard this as we were waiting for the elevator so I didn’t have to go back to the room, but several people did and we didn’t actually leave until 9:30.

At the history museum we had to stand in line for 30 minutes to get our free ticket. We needed to write our name and passport number down to get the ticket. Several members of the group were irritated wondering why this couldn’t have been done in advance, but our tour guide explained that about a year ago they changed the procedures for getting tickets. They used to let you get group tickets, but now you have to present yourself individually.

We only had an hour in the museum, but quite honestly this was enough as it was super warm inside the museum and very crowded. Leah I walked through the museum together. My favorite exhibit was the Terra Cotta Warriors and the mural on the wall behind it. There were several pictures of the different faces of the warriors. Leah’s favorite was the bronze hand-standing dragon.

Our next stop of the day was a jade factory. It really was more of a jade showroom and store, but they did have a small room where they demonstrated how the rock is carved and the store manager explained the different types of jade and how the artist needs to have a vision before they start carving to take advantage of the different colors. We were given 30 minutes or so to browse the gallery and shop.

Next on the agenda was visiting the Muslim Quarter for lunch. The Muslim Quarter is an area of Xian that has many food vendors and souvenir shops. We opted to not go to a sit down restaurant, but to roam the streets as if it were the State Fair and try many different foods sharing with everybody. We had a lamb (maybe goat) skewer with amazing spices, deep fried dumpling things, fried tofu and some other deep fried thing that I had no idea what it was but it was tasty, some sort of sweet cake thing, dried kiwi, and Chinese hamburger. All was pretty good and our only complaint was that we didn’t feel like we had enough time. We were given an hour and 10 minutes or so, and we felt very rushed. I said I would have gladly skipped the museum and jade factory to spend more time here.

After lunch we went to the city wall of Xian. The city wall stands 12 meters (40 feet) tall, 12-14 meters (40-46 feet) wide at the top and 15-18 meters (50-60 feet) thick at the bottom. It covers 13.7 kilometers (8.5 miles) in length with a deep moat surrounding it. We were given bikes and to ride around the top of the wall. Kathy Loper said that it would be the longest 8 miles we had ridden on a bike. We were give 45 minutes or so. Leah and I set out to go around the entire wall. Tom was with us a bit, but he stopped to take pictures and told us to keep going, so onward we went. We soon realized that we would not make it back by our meet time, so we picked up the pace. It was a bumpy ride up top as it is covered in large bricks, but we were maintaining a good pace until we rounded the 3rd corner when we were against the wind. Now it turned into a workout. We thought everyone had taken off in front of us and we were surprised that we hadn’t caught up or passed any of our group, so Leah and I thought we were the last to return. Turns out we were the 2nd and 3rd ones back and the rest of the group was still going around the wall. Everyone made it back about 20 minutes after the original time. No wonder Kathy said that would be the longest 8 miles. I was feeling quite sore when I got off the bike.

We had about a half hour back at the hotel before our next event. I took a really quick shower and washed some clothes and then we were back on the bus heading to dinner and a show. The dinner was our dumpling dinner where we were brought 14 different dumplings (plus soup and appetizer). The dumplings were so good. Our only complaint was that once again we felt rushed. The show was downstairs from the restaurant so we didn’t have far to go. The show was the Tang Dynasty show and consisted of music and dancing. Tom enjoyed taking several pictures.

We got back to the hotel around 9:30 and still had to pack as this was our last day in Xian and would be travelling to Shanghai in the morning. It was a jammed packed filled day. I won’t miss the super hard beds in Xian. It was sleeping on a plywood board. Hoping the beds in Shanghai will be better.