Choo Choo to Xian

My first time on a passenger train was quite an experience. These past three days of vacation the group and I took a short trip to Xian (or Xi’an – don’t really know why they put in apostrophe on it sometimes). The train was quite an experience and thank god for my ipod! On the way there we discovered how to actually read our train tickets. After are adventure at the ticket office – we bought tickets, then they were the wrong date, had to get a refund, and then stand in line to get tickets again – we really didn’t care which seats we had as long as we could get to Xian. There are three types of seats and we chose the ‘hard sleeper.’ This meant that each grouping of beds consist of six beds facing each other in stacks of three. The bottom bed is the best to have cause you can actually sit upright on your bed – well, I had the middle seat.

Not only can you not sit up on your seat, but also you have five other roommates who snore, fart, laugh, and wake up early and look at you while you sleep. (The foreign factor sometimes is good, but not when you are in a train car with a lot of Chinese cause it’s hard to hide if you want.) Long story short – I didn’t sleep much. We arrived in Xian after eight hours and ran into our guide Melanie. She took us to the hotel and then we were off to tour Xian. We hit all the popular tourist spots such as the Bianpo Village, Terracotta soldiers, Hot Springs (some house the Chiang Kai-shek lived at), and the terracotta soldier factory. The terracotta soldiers were definitely the highlight of the trip! Visiting the museum has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember! Seeing the ancient soldiers in such great condition for miles and miles was truly amazing. You get to the museum and you really get a grasp for the deep culture and long history the Chinese have.

We ate lots of foreign food while in Xian – which was nice for after three weeks of Chinese, Chinese, and Chinese our stomachs were ready for some western food. Subway was the first stop, followed by Starbucks, and some McDonalds before we returned. Service is bad in Chinese though, and fast food is not fast at all.

The second day in Xian was free time. We explored the city wall and did some shopping. Bought some shoes and ate some crazy Japanese style food. Walking around the city was fun because Xian is huge in comparison to Lanzhou and there is a lot to do. The city felt so alive and you could tell that people were excited to be there. We ran into lots of foreign and Chinese tourist (I followed a Spain group to hear the Chinese girl speak Spanish to them on their tour – so cool). They charge for everything though! Every place, even the parks, charged an entrance of 30 Yuan or more. Overall it was a great trip and I can’t wait to visit Beijing, for it is a LOT bigger than Xian. I bought lots of souvenirs and I can’t wait to share more details and pictures with my 13 loyal followers!