China Day 18, Xi'an City Wall

Thursday July 14^th

This morning Rally decided to take us to a little takeout place that made a local breakfast that she had heard from someone was really good. However, it was a really long walk, she wasn't really sure which way to go sometimes, people wanted something closer and faster because we wanted a quick breakfast so we could do our morning activity of bicycle riding before the heat of the day and when we got there there was no vegetarian option, and we have one person who is a vegetarian. It turned out the meal was basically corned beef in a flat bread bun, which was nothing special for most of us, but the locals were lined up twenty deep to get one. Everyone was pretty frustrated. Anyway we ate them and then Rally walked us to the city wall (another long walk). Then she went back to the hotel and a couple of other people went shopping. The rest of us rented bicycles and rode around the top of the city wall. Xi'an is an ancient walled city. The wall is about ten metres tall and maybe ten metres wide all around. It is a large rectangle and about 18 kilometres round trip. The top is cobblestoned and was quite bumpy on our one speed, old bikes. We had a good time, although is was sunny and very hot. We rode for about 90 minutes.

When we were finished we headed to a Starbucks and I had a green tea chai which was not as good as a Canadian chai latte. After that Paul and I went for a walk through the Muslim quarter and got lost in the narrow streets trying to find the Great Mosque. We stumbled upon a different mosque and when we went in we met two really nice people. The first was a little girl named Lucy who spoke pretty good English and was lots of fun to talk to. She was a really precocious girl. The other was a Chinese tourist from Beijing named something that sounded like “Orange” (that was his description). He told us he'd take us to the Great Mosque, which he did. He was really friendly and gave Paul his phone number so that he can contact him when he gets to Beijing, as he is staying a few days after I fly home. We explored the mosque and then the narrow market streets of the area watching people.

We headed back to the hotel by 6:00 to meet up with the group and Rally as we were going to dinner for a dumpling banquet. Rally told me then that Michael had been able to find my camera bag and the iPod as well! And he would bring them to the hotel the next morning. Man was I happy and lucky!

The restaurant was huge, noisy and had two musicians playing traditional instruments to play Western songs. There were 14 different types of dumplings and we consumed quantities of beer. After that we caught a small fleet of taxis to take us to the Wild Goose Pagoda, which is outside the city walls and supposedly has the largest water fountain show outside of Las Vegas. It was fun to stand there under the full moon and drink a couple more beer while we watched. The return trip to the hotel was lots of fun, as we loaded up into tuk tuks and had a wild and crazy ride through the city traffic. The end of a really fun day.