We were woken up by the cabin lady at 7am with hot coffee. We had just under an hour before we pulled into Xian train station. We had arranged with our hostel for a free pickup and we were pleased to see my name printed on a board being waved in the crowd. We made our way to the minibus and drove across town to our hostel. As we arrived there was a power cut and so we were unable to check in. We just dumped our bags and walked up the road to find a cash point. We spotted a coffee shop next to the bank so we went in and ordered jam toast. About half an hour later, a very colourful jam sandwich appeared with pink and green jam and dollops of cream, random.
We returned to the hostel and sat in the sofa area just reading until the power came back on. We finally checked into a room that is not technically a twin as it is one massive bed. It is so big we plan on sleeping in in a T shape with our bags separating us! The bathroom stinks but you cant have everything for £13 a night. We freshened up quickly then headed out to the South Gate of the city wall. We climbed the steps to be up on the wall where you could hire bikes to cycle the perimeter of the city, 13.7km long. Inside the walls there were small old buildings and outside there were nothing but sky scrappers. From the height of 40ft we had a great view as the buildings disappeared into the city smog.
We decided to hire a tandem as neither of us had ridden one before. We managed it but it was not the most comfortable ride. The person on the back could not see, therefore did not know when the bumps were coming, could not steer and could not brake. The person up front was constantly trying to correct the steering for two peoples movement. Not ideal riding but the whole experience was awesome. It took exactly 92 minutes to ride at some pace the whole way round. We had paid 80p to hire the bike for 100 minutes, what a bargain and a brilliant experience.
Climbing down from the wall we found a bar almost immediately as Jon needed a beer and I needed a sofa to sleep. A short power nap then we continued to wander within the city walls in the old town. We walked up a market stall street and purchased a few souvenirs spending a whopping £2.50. We entered a museum of the forest of stone etchings being one of the top ten highlights which was ok but not really worth the money. We walked through a small backstreet where I just had to sit and stroke a 4 year old Cody dog. He was so adorable.
Then I was chuffed to bits to see a couple of ladies playing badminton in the street. I asked if we could have a go and the poor lady didn’t get her rackets back for a good 15 minutes! Jon nearly knocked out a lady as she walked by, nearly knocked a guy off his moped and hit the shuttle which only had a handful of feathers on to the roof above a shop. We could not reach it and felt terrible but then the lady came out with a pole adapted for such a retrieval! It was such a fun afternoon. As the sun started to set we realised we had not eaten anything except the ‘jam toast’ this morning and so we found a backstreet restaurant and had some local dishes. Back at the hostel we relaxed in the bar all evening with a very loud Canadian girl, a kitten predator and a tiny yelping dog.
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