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Published: October 28th 2009
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We arrived in Xi’an after our overnight train ride around 8am (I think - can’t really remember the time). Not many people managed to get a good not sleep, except perhaps our guide John (who we shared a cabin with) who we shared two bottles of wine and a bottle of beer each (a bottle of beer is 500ml!).
Everybody was craving a shower since our previous day in the Hutong area of Beijing, everybody was still feeling a bit dusty - there is no shower on the train and since we checked out of hotels before our tour of Hutong area nobody could have a shower! We checked into our hotel shortly after arriving in Xi’an, but alas, our luggage was coming later. Of course there were some disgruntled fellow tourists as they wanted a shower and new clothes, but there isn’t much you can really do, so I enjoyed my breakfast and patiently waited.
After everybody had their shower and freshened up, we headed off to the Small Goose Pagoda. The complex was a pleasant change from the massive crowds of Shanghai and Beijing. Apart from our group, there was a scattering of other people floating around
the pagoda and the surrounding gardens. The Pagoda is 43m high and built in 709 for the purpose of holding scriptures brought back from India. The pagoda has been damaged by earthquakes over the years, with one knocking off the top while another in 1487 created a fracture about a foot wide in the top. However it isn’t all bad luck for the pagoda, another earthquake managed to close the fracture from the 1487 earthquake.
While we were there, our local guide Tony offered to write our names in calligraphy which is very cool. I will however get a friend to make sure it is correct before I get it tattooed across my forehead!
After the Pagoda we headed over to the city walls, which surround the central part of the city and are 14km in length. They are considered one of the best preserved city walls in China, most cities in China had walls surrounding them in the past, however most have been flattened. Fortunately the wall around Xi’an was reconstructed during the 1980s after much of it was neglected.
We had a few options on the wall, wonder around a small area that we first
came up, have a short ride on the rickshaws or hire a bike. Of course one of the things that I have been looking forward to on this trip was to ride a bike around the city wall. I know a bit strange, but how many people can say that they have ridden on a wall surrounding a city? Mind you this was only a couple of days after climbing the wall and my legs were feeling a little tight still.
I convinced Judith to ride a bike as well, so we wondered down and got our mean machines (I think Judith wanted to hire one of the tandem bikes so I did all the work). These bikes are fixed gears, probably weigh around 15kg and the tires are only pumped up half-way. I thought I was in for a rough ride, in particular when several bricks on the wall surface are missing. It was a great experience to ride around the city and get a good perspective of the city.
Dinner was another thing I was hyped for on this trip, a dumpling banquet. I can’t remember how many different dumplings we had, but I had my
fair share and some. After dinner, we went to a show at the same place. Maybe I was a bit tired from the not so good sleep on the train and riding around the city walls for an hour, but the show was a bit so so, but I am glad I went. The show was a bit of a dance and song with traditional outfits.
Tomorrow Terracotta Warriors.
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