China Day 13

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4th October

We settled the hotel bill, and took a taxi to the train station. We wanted to go on the Maglev train which is the fastest in the world and works by the train hovering over the track using magnets. It’s top speed is 431kmh and whilst we were travelling on a single ticket to the airport, other tourists were on return tickets and just travelling on the train. The train has special windows which slow down the outside view to make it easier to see.

Our next internal flight took us to Xi’an, and we watched with interest Dad coming through customs as it was becoming a bit of a spectator sport. He only set off the alarm for his belt on this occasion. The taxi that took us to the hotel stopped outside and we had to check that it was the right one as the name on the hotel as different to that on our itinerary. The hotel had been taken over recently, and so there was an interesting mix of two lots of hotel leaflets.

The hotel was within walking distance of the city walls, and so in the evening we went for a walk to explore. Our trip the next day was leaving from a different hotel, and so we needed to ascertain how far it was from our hotel. It was some considerable distance, and therefore we would need to get taxi there in the morning. We ate in the hotel, and seemed to be the only diners of the evening.

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