Our flight to Xi’an was nothing short of very eventful. The three of us overly worried about excess baggage. As it turned out, China Eastern Airlines was pretty relaxed. You should have seen the folks carrying on 4 and 5 pieces of “hand luggage”. Carlos’ stack of 3 and my 2 paled in comparison. I went shopping in a camera store to find my USB cable. All for naught. But as I was starting to leave, a young salesman said “what about a card reader”? So once again, Kathleen is a happy camper with her new card reader to download photos for 45 days. When I came out of the store I found Phil and Carlos rummaging through all of Phil’s belongings. He was visibly upset, saying he lost his money clip with over $800 in it. We played the game “where do you last remember having it”. We called the hotel asking someone to check his room and safe. Nothing. Just as he was about to give finding it – he opened his wallet to find the “missing” money clip. He sheepishly said he never kept wallet and money together. Problem resolved. Phil received the “most senior” moment award of the day and the bill from the bar for a round of drinks.
Hong Kong sure is a big airport. We went in search of that bar for Phil to buy us drinks. After about a 15 min walk we finally found one. Downed it quickly then started our way back up the concourse to our gate. It turned out, our plane was at a mid field terminal so we loaded into a bus for the transfer.
Our flight from Hong Kong was stacked up and we circled for almost 1 hour. Consequently, my first impression of Xi An was: where is it. It was like pea soup - we had no idea if we were landing at an airport or a dirt strip until the very last moment. Clearing immigration and customs was easy. When we exited the building, there was someone holding a sign with our names on it. Our guide was Melody and our driver “Mr. John”. We asked her about the low ceiling and she said it was a combination of pollution and sand because they were in the dry season.
The drive from the airport took forever. We came out of customs at 6:30 and we arrived at the hotel at 8:30. Traffic lived up to everything I had heard and read – awful congestion. I can also confirm the belief that very few Chinese speak English. Our hotel was the Gaosu Shenzhou International Hotel. I will never go back nor recommend this hotel to anyone. According to our tour operator, this is a 4 star hotel. However, there is no a.c. because the system won’t be turned on until the heat of July. The temperature in both our rooms was approaching 84 degrees with only small windows for ventilation. It was next to impossible to sleep under these conditions.
After a fitful night’s rest (if you can call it such), we had our guide and driver pick us up for 8:30 a.m. for our tours to the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and then on to see the Terra Cotta warriors. For me, the Pagoda was the pearl in the middle of the oyster. Upon arriving at the pagoda, Melody introduced us to Mr. Lee who would be our tour guide for the next two hours.
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| Phil Carlos & Kathleen with Mr. Lee, our guide |
He was a walking encyclopedia He was a student of Buddhism and talked at great length about the pagoda, its history, the monks that live there and all the artifacts in the various buildings. Mr. Lee took us into a room to teach us calligraphy. He even translated our names and wrote them on rice paper. My name stands for success, wisdom and jade and Carlos is Car, Dew and Wisdom. Little did all our children know how much wisdom their parents have!! As on most tours, you end up in the commercial area where the pressure is great to buy, buy and buy some more. A somewhat sad ending to an otherwise enjoyable morning.
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| Buddah at Wild Goose Pagoda |
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| Carlos in front of Upside down tree |
We then drove 45 minutes to the see the famous Terra Cotta Warriors. This is a massive complex of 5 buildings. Walk is the name of the game, promptly followed by the word “steps”. And we did our fair share of both.
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| The Warriors |
Building 1 is the largest and houses the most warriors. There are over 6000 warriors uncovered at this dig site. The most famous have been moved to another building and kept behind glass. The kneeling archer is one that you see time and again on any literature about the Terra Cotta Warriors.
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| Carlos, Phil & Kathleen in main building with Terra Cotta Warriors |
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| The Kneeling Warrior behind glass |
We spent the most time in this building. In the other buildings, they have displays of how they preserve the warriors and how they put them together after finding broken parts. In the last building we entered, there was a display with the chariots that were excavated from a hillside of the burial site of one of the first emperors. By the time we returned to the hotel we were “too pooped to pop”. Our feet hurt from walking so much and climbing all those stairs in 5 buildings.
We hung out in the hotel. Or I should say, Carlos and Phil hung out. After having a night cap at 8 p.m., I went to bed without bothering to eat.
The following day we were scheduled to check out of the hotel, take a tour of the wall of Xi An, have lunch and head to the airport for our afternoon flight. Carlos and I passed on the wall trip and spent a leisurely morning getting packed and ready for our trip to Chongqing to board our river boat.
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