trip to Xi'an

At the beginning of the month, Jon had a whole week off from classes for National Day. We thought we would take a short trip to Xi'an. The kids have been studying ancient China in school, so this would be a great field trip. The trip was not a bad trip, it just did not exactly turn out how we had originally planned.

The main problem is that most of the Chinese people also have 8 days of vacation at the same time. The train system is over loaded and it is very hard to get tickets. We did manage to get tickets to go to Xi'an and only one day later than we had originally planned. We could not buy return tickets while we were in Hangzhou. We packed up and went any way. We knew there was a chance that we would get stuck in Xi'an.

We took a hard sleeper train. This was our car. We had 4 top bunks. All in all it was not bad. Our car was not too noisy or smokey. The train trip was 23 hours long.

The country side on the way to Xi'an was beautiful!

Jon and I spent a lot of time just gazing out the window. We also read books on our Kindles. The kids played cards and video games.

We saw several sites while we were in Xi'an. But the most notable one was the famous Terracotta Warriors.

They really are amazing. These Terracotta Warriors were unearthed in the late 70's when a farmer accidentally found them while drilling a well. They had been buried for nearly 2000 years and no one knew they were there.

Xi'an and the Terracotta warriors are some of the "must sees" in China. I could go see them again! The kids really liked them too. (You can't tell from the picture, though).

Once we got to Xi'an we did get tickets to return home to Hangzhou. The only problem was that the tickets were not until Oct. 11. That was about 4 days longer than we had wanted to stay. We had plenty of time to poke around the city. We walked along the city wall, rang the bell at the bell tower, climbed the drum tower, saw a shadow puppet show, ate some great food at the Muslim quarter, bought some souvenirs. We didn't have to rush at all. When Oct. 11th finally came we were very glad to be on the train and headed for Hangzhou!

We had soft sleeper tickets. This meant that we were all in one room and we could close the door. The train ride home was about 22 hours.

We arrived at our apartment in time for Jon to change clothes, grab his books and take a taxi out to school. He arrived just on time for his class!

We spent the next few days recovering from our vacation!

While we were in Xi'an, Hallie helped us order food at a restaurant. She wrote the dishes we wanted in Chinese characters! The waitress could read them too! She is really improving.

What did we learn? We probably won't try to travel during National Day Holiday next year.