Xian Titan Times Hotel (Tuesday, August 21st, 2018)

Our Hotel in Xian, once again was amazing.

Views from our window.  You can see the city wall and the park across the street from us.

The complimentary breakfast  buffet was very nice too.



We enjoyed our stay at this beautiful hotel, but it is about time to say goodbye once again.

High Speed Train from Xian to Chengdu (Tuesday, August 21st, 2018)

When we finished lunch, we took a twenty minute bus ride from the restaurant to the high speed train terminal. Our tickets had already been purchased for us, and were handed out to us on the bus, so we didn’t have to wait in any lines when we got there. Each of our tickets had our name and passport number on them, and were checked carefully at the gate as we entered the terminal. We sent our bags through the scanner at the entrance and then proceeded in. 

This was our first glimpse of the high speed train we were about to board.

The train terminal was modern, clean and beautiful! The train from Xian to Chengdu has only been running since December, so this is a very new route.  

Oh, it's huge too!

Inside the terminal, waiting to board.

This is where we would say goodbye to our incredible local guide Louise.  We loved her bubbly personality and cheery disposition.  We will miss her.  Jason will continue on with us to Chengdu.

It was only about 20 minutes from the time we arrived until we would board our train, so we waited in line. As we stood there, the line behind us grew quickly, and we were very happy that we were at the front. We had assigned seats, so it wasn’t a matter of seat selection, it was just nice to be able to take our time boarding the train. Our luggage was also being loaded for us, so no worries there either.

Louise lead us to the correct car before leaving us. Jason will be riding with us on the train and will continue as our tour director in Chengdu.

The train was beautiful with plenty of leg room.

The high speed train is very smooth, in fact, I am writing this post on the train. There is no wifi or cellular because of the number of tunnels the train has to go through. As we were leaving Xian, our view quickly opened up from city to open farm land.

I was surprised, that as soon as we approached the mountains, we disappeared into the darkness of our first tunnel. We would emerge periodically for about three seconds and then quickly return to the darkness of the tunnels. The mountains just outside of Xian are very green and very steep, so apparently the only way for a high speed train to travel through is inside the mountains. We later learned that some of the tunnels were 10 miles long.  It took 12 years to build this section of the train.

I attempted to take some pictures of the mountains as we would emerge from the tunnels, but this is the only one that turned out.  We were moving too fast.  Basically, they were steep and green.

 Once we got through the mountains, we emerged from the tunnels into a lot of beautiful farm land and small villages. The farming had now changed from corn to rice fields and lotus paddies.

The train made several stops along the way to Chengdu, some in larger cities and some in small villages.

There was a dining car on the train and carts that would come through with drinks and snacks, but the highlight of our ride was two little kids.

The girl spoke very good English and was incredibly friendly.  The boy spoke no English, but was very intrigued by us and really wanted to keep trying to talk to us.  We had a great time with these two for most of our trip.  The little girl had lived in San Francisco for about a year, and that's where she learned to speak English so well.  She was a tenacious little thing.  She made our day because she reminded us so much of our own girls.  

We made it to Chengdu after about four hours on the train.  We went almost 700 miles.  It was such a smooth ride, we couldn't believe it!

The Chengdu train station was also very beautiful, clean and crowded.

As we left the station, this was the view of the outside.

It was such a treat to ride this train.  I don't know what I expected, or if it met my expectations, but it is probably something we will never get to do again, so I am so glad we had the chance today!

Xian Shaanxi Provincial Museum (Monday, August 21st, 2018 )

When we finished our morning walk we went as a group to the Xian Shaanxi Provencial Museum, where they have a very nice display of relics from the Qin, Han and Tang Dynasties. 

As we made our way to the museum by bus, Louise had gone ahead of us to get our tickets. It took her over an hour of standing in line to get our tickets to the museum. She then met us at the bus and walked us over to the entrance. Once we were there, we could see the line that she had been waiting in. It went all the way around the museum. She said that they limit the number of people that can go through the museum each day, so many of the people in line wouldn’t even be able to get tickets after their wait. This is just one of the ways that Gate-1 make it so easy for us. We jumped into the 10 minute long line to enter the museum, and then we were inside.

Since the museum is so crowded, Louise explained some of the exhibits to us in the lobby, then gave us an hour on our own to visit the areas of the museum that we were most interested in. 

We visited the displays slighty out of order, going through the Han, then Tang and then Qin. By the time we got to the Qin Dynasty Exhibit, it was so crowded that we just moved through it as one huge mass of humanity. We couldn’t get near enough to most of the displays to even see them, so I snapped a few pictures in the less crowded areas and we moved on.

There is a large stone lion in the foyer of the museum. It is the largest stone lion in china. 

I will share a sampling of what we saw in the exhibits.

There were some really interesting and beautiful pieces that they have discovered in this area.  

They opened an exhibit today of a new terracotta warrior that they just recently unearthed. It still has much of the original color on it, unlike all of the other soldiers that are just gray.  So we viewed this exhibit before going through the final Qin Dynasty hall.

Look at the detail on his armor.

These artifacts are from the first Chinese Dynasty about 2,200 years ago.  They are incredible considering they are SO old.

When we finished at the museum we headed to lunch at the same lunch restaurant we enjoyed on our first day in Xian. They have really good food, so we were excited to eat there again. Jason and Louise knew that this restaurant would get us in and out quickly so that we wouldn’t have any trouble catching our train on time.

Xian City Wall and Park (Tuesday, August 21st, 2018)

Steve and I got up early this morning so that we could enjoy a stroll in the park before we leave this beautiful city.  The park and city wall are right across the street from our hotel, so we couldn't let this opportunity slip away.  

This wall was built 600 years ago during the Ming dynasty to protect the city. Today the city extends far beyond the wall, but the wall still stands as part of the cities history.

The activities in this park were very different than the activities in yesterday’s park, so we got to see a whole new side of Xian, China.

There were a lot more people just walking.

Ping pong.

This looks really easy, but I think I pulled something.

And this guy is the grand finale of this post!  That's crazy!

We didn’t really join in today because we had limited time, but we really enjoyed watching all of the people as we walked through. The men playing ping pong really wanted us to join them, but we didn't want to get whipped by a bunch of 80 year old men anyway, so we had to pass.