Train Ride to Xian: June 11th

Today was a new, fun experience. Riding the Bullet Train from Beijing to Xian. Just getting to the train station was already an experience!! You have not experienced rush hour traffic until you have experienced rush hour traffic in Beijing!! It seems like a free for all with people weaving in and out in what seems like a hap-hazard way. But we are told there are very few accidents. Hard to believe since we saw lots of “almost accidents” every day. However, I will say that there seems to be many unwritten rules of the road that everyone just seems to follow. And where driving in China, your car horn is your best friend.

At last we did make it safe in sound at that train station. What a busy place!! The Beijing Train Station is home to both the regular trains and the bullet trains. Our escort for the morning was a different escort and you could tell just by the look on his face that he was worried about all our luggage! As soon as we got through security with our passports and tickets he went to find us a porter to help with our luggage. That turned out to be a brilliant idea! We would have struggled getting every piece down the ramps and escalators to get to the platform. We even got to go with our luggage and porter and got to load the train before everyone else. The seats on the train were great! Much more roomy than an airplane and they recline back a lot more than seats on a plane. We felt pretty special in first class seats for the trip. For the train ride we were offered free snacks and water. We also took snacks with us since the train ride was going to last for 5 hours.

While on the the train we relaxed, enjoyed the scenery, read books, and I wrote a couple of blogs. Ava played and read books but didn't ever take a nap. We didn't know what to expect with a train that went almost 180 mph. But it was a smooth ride.

After we arrived in Xian, our guide Micki picked us up and took us to our hotel. She is very sweet!

Micki explained to us that the population of Xian is about 10 million (approximately the size of New York). The city is divided into 2 parts. The part inside the city wall is the old city and the part outside the city wall is the new city.

On the way to the hotel we decided that evening we would try a local cuisine called the hot pot and then would go down town to see the musical fountain. So we had about an hour at the hotel to relax and get cleaned up before it was time to go out for the evening.

The hot pots were so good! You start with raw veggies, meat, eggs, tofu, and noodles. The waitress came around and light the fire under the hot pots so that the water would start to boil. Once it was boiling then you could start adding whatever ingredients you wanted and wait for them to cook. The hot pots were so hot that this process didn't take very long. While you were waiting for your food to cook you went to the spice and sauce table to mix up sauces to dip your cooked food in. One of my favorite meals so far!! Yummy!!

Funny story; while getting situated at the restaurant and adding chairs to the table so that we could all sit down, I was helping Ava to get situated and wasn't paying attention. When I went to scoot back to sit down I didn't realize that Micki had moved my chair over to give me more room and I fell right to the floor...super gracefully I'm sure!! I was laughing so hard, as was my family, but Micki felt horrible. I tried to tell her it was fine but I could barely getting words out while I was laughing so hard. LOL!!

After dinner we went to see the Big Goose Pagoda. While there we saw lots of gorgeous statues that were made from the same clay as the terra cotta soldiers. And Ava's favorite was seeing a really large TV screen on the the ceiling of one of the buildings that was showing ocean animals. The last thing we saw before bedtime was the musical, dancing water fountain. I was a lot like the bellagio fountains. Ava loved it but also was crashing fast. So we called it a night after that.