Day 222: Xi'an

So today Randy and I took a trip to Xi'an. We had to get up at 3:30 am and take a taxi to the airport (we planned the trip through TripAdvisor, so it came in advance). Traffic wasn't too bad, but the driver drove really slowly for some reason. Was he trying to avoid police? Who knows. Anyway, we got to the airport, and the line was insanely long: we had to wait in it for about an hour, and I was almost falling over with fatigue. I managed to get on the plane and fell asleep for about an hour while we were on it. When we landed, the guide wasn't there to meet us, so I called Sophia Liu, the woman in charge of the tour, to ask what happened. The guide showed up a couple minutes later: her name was Sasha.

It took an hour to drive to the Terra Cotta Warriors. Sasha talked non-stop about them and Xi'an and I mostly stayed quiet. I could tell she had rehearsed a lot of this information, many times. It was a looooong way to get there. First, Sasha had to get us a ticket. Randy and I chatted with a black couple from Florida while we waited; they were taking a tour, too. We had to walk to a place the a golf-cart-like contraption, then, which took us to the "second entrance," where we actually saw the museum. The warriors were located in different pits. First we saw Pit 1, the most elaborate--with standing warriors, a hospital, and even horses. It was the most elaborate. The other pits were more fragments, or even had warriors under the earth, still unearthed. Pit 2 had a couple warriors standing on cases on their own, including a kneeling warrior and a general. It was fascinating to see the warriors, but the problem was that I was super tired and hungry the entire time, so I was a bit crabby as well. And it didn't help that our guide walked quite fast (I had to tell her to slow down) and even compared the "tummy" (a word I hate) of a warrior general to my tummy at once point. She also asked if I needed to use the elevator to get to the exhibition hall. So the implied weight references didn't thrill me. I know she was probably trying to be kind, but still....I'm not used to such personal remarks.

Here are some pictures from the Warriors:

One of my first views of the warriors.

Sasha took this picture of me. You can tell I'm tired.

Warrior horses.

Kneeling Warrior, survivor from Pit 2. I bought a statue of him.

After the warriors, we were taken to a restaurant for lunch, which was a bit underwhelming: the food was pretty cold, even the soup, and all of it had peppers in it. It wasn't bad-tasting, though: chicken, for example. The duck had like five pieces of duck and 300 pieces of onion.  But it did fill me up. I managed to take a nap in the SUV after lunch and felt better afterwards.

We then explored the City Wall of Xi'an a bit. It was raining by this time, and I had to go to the toilet before exploring. No toilet paper, of course, so I had to get some from Sasha and Randy, who came better prepared. The views from the Wall interested me more than the Wall itself. I got to see a moat, for example, along with a building that had architecture based on the Ming Dynasty. We didn't spend a lot of time there, though. Sasha wanted to take us to the Muslim Quarter, which I was curious about.

The Muslim Quarter was more interesting to me: lots of shopping and food, like Taipei. Lots of color. Randy and I split a bowl of something that tasted like sticky rice and dates. Randy also bought a scarf for his wife from a Muslim woman who, oddly enough, would not haggle. I also saw a young beggar man in the street, with a splint on his leg: I don't see a lot of this in Shanghai. And the rain poured down the entire time, until we left around 6 pm.

City Wall and Muslim Quarter pics:

City Wall, in the rain.

A view of the moat.

The Drum Tower, near the Muslim Quarter.

Muslim Quarter, in the rain.

Randy eating sticky rice with dates.

It was an hour ride to the airport. Sasha made me fill out the survey about her in the car, which I thought was a bit odd, and Sophia even called to see how the trip was. I said mostly good things, except for the food. (Later, the next day, I shared with her my complaints about Sasha.) The driver was nice, though--very fast, Randy noted, and skilled. We might our flight in plenty of time: the wait time for boarding passes was minimal coming back--5 minutes unlike the one hour wait this morning. Then as we waited to board, we had a traditional Chinese meal of Burger King: I had a Bacon Cheese Whopper, Randy a Hot and Spicy Chicken Sandwich. The fries were great there--I haven't eaten at BK in years, and now I've eaten there two times in three days. I'm probably going to hell.

After eating, we waited to bored, but our flight was delayed a half hour. Once we got going, things were okay, I got a window seat again (yay) but we were further back on the plane. I managed to squeeze in an another hour of sleep on the plane, too, and Randy and I also chatted.  Took awhile to get to the terminal: we had to wait on the plane a bit and then the shuttle bus to the terminal took awhile at Pudong. We located the driver and he took us home. We got home about 1:15 am Saturday. I was hungry and wanted spaghetti. :)   And then, finally, I went to sleep.