Day 103: Xi'an

Drum Tower (Xi'an had one too)
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Arrive late into Xian in style. Taxi driver first takes us to a similarly named, but different, hotel; thankfully Jane’s still awake enough to be paying attention and manages to communicate the error (our Chinese is not improving at all). Cab driver obviously feels a shortcut is preferable to the busy intersection, so drives down a few payments, across a plaza and bumps down some kerbs to pull up and point across the way to another hotel, the only thing on the street not lit up.

Turns out to be the worst hotel of our trip so far – also one of the cheapest so shouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. Smelly, dingy, with threadbare sheets that don’t fit on the bed properly and a mattress and pillows so hard (even by Asia standards) that we’d have been more comfortable sleeping on our tiled kitchen floor whilst resting our heads on a pad of A4. Best bit was check out where they suggested that the ashtray was chipped and that we should pay for it! Did think it was odd that there was a price list in the room for everything “should we wish to take away as a souvenir” – it included “burn to carpet” which seemed an unlikely memento.

More pagodas and another wall

Long walk to BWGP
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Anyway after a poor nights snooze we venture out to see some of the sights. Yet again we make the error of thinking something looks like ‘only a few blocks’ on the map to discover that a block can easily be the length of Princes Street in this country, so take a long walk via the crumbling (and closed) Little Pagoda and some back streets – on these we got to see some ‘real’ Chinese city living with mini-kitchens on bikes selling noodle dishes and thousands of people on ancient looking bikes.

Big Wild Goose Pagoda - obviously
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The interestingly named Big Wild Goose Pagoda and surrounding park was the main draw for the day which was pretty impressive, even to weary us. Basically a tall tower temple built by only wood (no nails or screws, just notches and balance), a variety of statues and other minor temples.

Later that day, and by now having had the sense to catch a cab back, we went up onto the old city wall (apparently the only complete surviving one in China) to hire bikes and ride round the 14km circumference. Despite being a little cool, at around 4pm, this was really good fun and thankfully pretty easy going on the flat cobbles given the fact that we had only 90 minutes to complete the lap before the rental place shut for the night.

Who knows!
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On the way back to the hotel we mockingly noted the dumpling restaurant in front of the hotel proclaiming itself to be ‘legendary’ – only to find it listed as to first choice for dining in our guidebook. Needless to say we went there for dinner and ordered the Dumpling Banquet, a mind-numbing array of dumplings in all shapes, sizes and flavours – most of which tasted pretty good although we’re still not sure what was actually in them all.