Thursday, June 23, 2011
PLANES, TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES
After flying 15 hours nonstop from Atlanta to Shanghai, we met
our guide at the airport and she took us to the train station,
where we boarded an overnight train to Xi’an. Our compartment
consisted of a roughly 6x10 room with two sets of bunk beds and
a very narrow aisle in the middle. It was over 90 degrees in
Shanghai when we arrived, and it wasn’t much cooler in our
compartment , so no one got much sleep . Evidently the air
conditioning only works when the engine is running, and the
train made a lot of stops during the night, so it never really
cooled off. We finally arrived in Xi’an about 10 this morning,
where we were met by another guide who delivered us to our hotel
with instructions to meet him in the lobby in three hours to
begin our tour of Xi’an. After spending the past 48 hours
traveling, we were overdue for a shower, to say the least. By
that time the jet lag was really beginning to take its toll, and
we all fell asleep until time for the tour.
Our guide took us
inside the city wall area of Xi’an, where we shopped in the
street market and climbed the 600 year old Bell Tower. Or, I
should say, Jamie and Holt climbed the tower. By the time we had
walked 6 blocks to get there, poor Maili had blisters on her
feet and was about to fall asleep standing up. Out of all of us,
the jet lag seems to have hit her the hardest. So we climbed to
the second level of the tower and hung out there while the guys
checked out the view from the top. By the time they got down,
Maili had almost fallen asleep and we decided to call it a day.
Now we’re back in the room and everyone has passed out even
though it’s not even 7:00 at night. Hopefully we’ll manage to
get on China time soon, we have a busy day planned for tomorrow.
After touring Xi’an some more and visiting the Terra Cotta
Soldiers, we will have dinner a local dumpling house and board
another overnight train to Nanjing, the capital of Callie’s
province. So no updates tomorrow, since we won’t be back in a
hotel until the day after that. |
View from the top of the Bell Tower in Xi'an
Stopping for a rest
City wall in Xi'an |
