Thursday Sep 30 - Xian

Plane flight to Xian.  1.5 hours; no great shakes.

We were picked up by our guide, Li, and our driver, "Mr. John".  The air here is totally gray from smog.  My eyes burn.  Uggh. The airport was about an hour from Xian, and we first went to lunch.  More typical tourist fare.  It seems our lunches will consist of this.  So touristy they gave us forks and knives, no chopsticks.  I wasn't sure I remembered, but somehow I did.

We toured the Buddhist pagoda from the 7^th century.  It was built in 652 during the Tang Dynasty in commemoration of the monk, Rabbi Xuanzang, who walked to India to study and then walked back after 17 years with a load of books on his back.  I don't know why he was called Rabbi, but that's what was on the signs depicting his life.  Maybe he was from one of the lost tribes??? 

While we were walking around, my little camera slipped from my hands and fell directly onto the lens mechanism.  It was completely bent and destroyed.  Bah.  I still have my Canon, but that's the end of the videos.

We went from there to the city wall to look around.  Since the October 1 National Holiday is upon us, there are red lanterns and flags all around.  Essentially, this is the Chinese July 4.  The tradition is for everyone to get up early to watch the flag raising in the central town square.  Supposedly there will be over 1 million people in Beijing.  We are not far from the main square at our hotel here, so we might get up to watch it.  Or not.

In planning for tomorrow, Li mentioned that we could go to a terra cotta factory.  This is becoming a theme here of going to the "factory" and being quickly ushered into the showroom.  We tried to beg off, but she was very persistent at "not wanting to push us".  So we'll go to kill some of the time and to let her think she's doing her job.  They are very pushy in trying to "satisfy" us, whether we want it or not.

Dinner tonight is on our own.  When we asked, we were steered to the restaurants here in the hotel.  I think we'll take a walk.

 

So we took our walk.  We went past the central square of town and saw the flag lowering ceremony.  Traffic stopped while the army squad paraded to the flagpole and lowered the flag.  The national anthem played, and people were singing.  The patriotism was palpable.

We continued our walk searching for a restaurant.  We walked and walked.  This is a city of 7 million, and it seemed most of them were on the street.  People walking everywhere.  The stores were open selling clothes and electronics.  But no restaurants.  I briefly considered buying a new camera, but decided against it.  The traffic is crazy, and crossing a street is taking your life in your hands.  Many cars and motorbikes and bicycles have no lights on, making them even more dangerous.  No one stops.  Cross walks? Hah!  Ann got freaked.  We never found a restaurant that had a menu we could understand.  At one, we couldn't even get them to figure out we wanted to look at a menu before sitting down.  So we finally made our way back to our hotel to eat there.  A "Moroccan" restaurant.  Hmmmm.  Hummus without cumin.  Tasteless couscous.  Ann's schwarma was half decent.  We got what was coming to us.