Ancient Walled City with Pizza!

Donkey cart parade
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Pingyao is a small ancient walled city.  Its very laid back and has lots of little guesthouses to stay in.  It is the setting for the movie "Raise the Red Lantern" if you are interested.  The streets are lined with red lanterns and at night its stunning.  Its super dirty...not with garbage or anything...its dirty with dirt.  We ate lots of dirt.

We took a motorized rickshaw from the train station which was so fun for us!  Only $1.25   Our guesthouse was adorable and the family that ran it was very very sweet and booked us a soft sleeper to Xian on the black market :)

Pinyao Street
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We spent most of our time walking around town and along the ancient wall.  There were some temples and museums that we went to.  We pretty much had them all to ourselves.  The locals were so friendly and all the kids wanted to try to talk to us in English.  While wandering around we bumped into a guy hauling coal on his motorcycle/cart that had broke down.  We helped him push it to flat ground where he got it started again.  It was all very low key and refreshing.

Card game & Pot repairman
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We saw a funeral procession which was very interesting and colorful and loud.

We bought a huge log.  That's right...what better way to make backpacking easier than buying the heaviest souvenir you can find!  Its a beautiful sculpture and we had had rice wine.

The couple we shared a room with at the guesthouse lives 2 blocks away from us in chicago!  So crazy.

Lastly, we ate pizza.  REALLY GOOD PIZZA by any standard.  It was a great meal.  While eating the paparazzi took pictures of us through the restaurant window...one guy even came in the restaurant to take our picture eating.  We really are famous here!  Someday we will be on the mantles of all Chinese families!

We took an overnight sleeper to Xi'an.  Today we are taking a 'vacation day' at our hostel to rest.  Tomorrow we will go to the Terracotta Army.  In case we don't have electricity tomorrow....HAPPY BIRTHDAY LISA and RILEY!!!!

More later...