Welcome to Xi'an

I think I’ve come up to Xi’an in the trip stories. I am going to be on many overnight trains during this journey and the train from Beijing from Xi’an is the first. At this point, I’ve been on trains in over twenty countries but this was only the third time I’ve ever been on an overnight train, the other two times being in Egypt back in January.

On the trains in China, we are sleeping in cabins that sleep six. There are two rows of bunks that sit three high. I was in the bottom bunk and, even though I tend to be claustrophobic, there was plenty of room for me to stretch out and I was even able to get about five hours of good sleep, which is as good as I ever hope for on a train. All-in-all, I can’t complain about the ride. I guess I could complain about the semi-clean squat toilets, but there’s not much point.

When we arrived in Xi’an, we were shuttled to our hostel, which took around 45 minutes. It was still morning, so we met in the hostel restaurant and had breakfast and discussed what was in the city for us to do. The hostel was pretty nice and in a decent location and I was pretty happy with the food in the restaurant, though it was very westernized. There also was a bar in the hostel but, believe it or not, I never visited it. We only spent a few nights there.

We took a walk around the area in Xi’an in which we were staying and got oriented. We were pretty close to the City Wall, the Drum and Bell Towers and the Muslim Quarter, all of which I will discuss later.

After the walk, we were left alone to do what we wanted to do. Since the walk finished in the Muslim Quarter, I started my touring at the Great Mosque, which is one of the oldest and more famous mosques in China. It did not compare to the fantastic examples of architecture that I saw in the great mosques of Egypt, but it was certainly worth a visit. After the Great Mosque, I went back to my room at the hostel and rested for a little bit.

Xi’an has a wall that surrounds the old city. It is rectangular, sits around twenty-meters high and is eight-and-a-half miles in circumference. A popular past time is to go to the top of the South Tower, rent a bike and drive around for great views of the city. The problem with this plan, for me, is that I never learned to ride a bike. That didn’t stop me, though. I climbed to the top of the City Wall and walked around the entire structure. All fourteen kilometers. It took about three hours. Sadly, however, the beautiful views that I was promised were obscured by horrible, horrible smog. It was even worse in Xi’an than it was in Beijing. Oh, well. Mission accomplished as well as it could have been, I guess.

When I got back to the hotel, we went out for a traditional Xi’an meal. Xi’an evidently is famous throughout China for its food. One dish in particular is a mutton soup with pancakes in it. If I think of it, I’ll look up the name of the dish because I can’t remember it off the top of my head. (I looked it up. It’s called Pao Mo.) We had that and about a half-dozen other dishes along with some homemade pomegranate juice. It was really good, but . . .

After dinner, the group went out to a karaoke bar. Unfortunately, something attacked my stomach on the way over and I decided to forego the alcohol and singing for a trip back to my hostel and some relief. I hate to blame the Xi’an food, but the only other thing I had to eat that day was scrambled eggs and toast. All things considered, though, I’d do it again.