Xi'an

Trip Start Jun 10, 2008
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13
20
Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of China  , Shaanxi,
Thursday, July 17, 2008

We spent a good Tuesday evening on the streets of Shanghai.  It's reall a beautiful city.  We spent some time at the riverside admiring the impressive skyline while being pushed around from every side.  These people have not heard of personal bubbles and they are very touchy and do not leave room for you to even catch a breath. 
We did find a train to Xi'an which left Wednesday morning.  It was a rough twenty-hour trip.  We squeezed into our three seats facing another three seats.  The three across from us had four people and a baby crowding it.  The baby was great (at first) it loved to stare at us strange looking people, and the more faces we made him, the happier he was.  The first 4 hours were not so bad either, but then the train became more and more uncomfortable.  Soon, the aisles were filled with nearly as many people as the seats and going to the toilet was a chore.  The hard seats didn't recline, so there was no comfortable way to sleep.  Smokers (most all the men) began to ignore the no smoking signs, permeating the train with cigarette smoke causing us to breathe through our shirts.  By 1:00 in the morning, when I had finally gone to sleep for a few hours, the baby woke up and started to cry, keeping me up for another hour.  I finally got back to sleep and slept the rest of the way into Xi'an where we arrived at nearly 5:00.  It may not sound like too bad of an experience, but I am still sore from sitting for so long and I will not do another 20 hours on a hard seat. 
This morning we disembarked from the train and caught a taxi to our friendly hostel just inside the city walls.  The city looks exciting, although we haven't seen too much of it.  We went back to the train station this morning to buy our Sunday evening (hard sleeper) tickets to Shanghai.  Our cab driver drove us in circles until the meter nearly doubled what it took to get to our hostel.  We finally jumped out and handed him a majority of the money that the meter read, but we were pretty upset that he couldn't just take us straight to the train station.  We took a bus back to the hostel.
Anyway, we are going to spend today exploring the city, tomorrow with the Terracotta Warriors, and Sabbath at Hua Shan.  So it should be a fun weekend. 
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Comments

crowmagnumman
crowmagnumman on Jul 18, 2008 at 12:56AM

Xi'An
Man, it sucks that your trip to Xi'An was so difficult. I hope the sights there make up for it.

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