China: Xi'an City Wall, Train Ride to Beijing

The next morning, we headed up onto the Xi'an City Wall.

Louise, Me, Wendy and Emily with the south gate behind us. I should note that the main gate of most places faces south in China as it satisfies feng shui ("wind" and "water"); they believed death and destruction came from the north.

Francy and Louise.

Francy and Me just inside the south gate but not yet on the wall.

Wendy and Me. This gives an idea of how tall the wall is.

Fancy metal work.

Watchtower at the south gate.

Fancy art museum just inside the city wall.

Emily and Me opted to ride our bikes around the top of the wall. The first couple bikes they gave Me had problems, but the third one was the charm!

Louise and Wendy rode around the wall in a little car.

Me riding on the wall. It was a good ride, although a bit bumpy at spots. It's about 8.5 miles around the wall and relatively flat (although there's a slight incline going up to the southeast corner).

Emily and me riding.

Me at the southwest corner of the wall.

Tower at the west gate.

Guangren Temple, a Tibetan Buddhist temple, at the northwest corner.

Bodhi tree on the temple grounds.

Watchtower at the northwest corner.

The blues are so bright, it looks like they glow!

Cool door knockers.

A moat runs completely around the city wall. There is a beautiful park that goes around a lot of it as well.

Video of the park.

Some monks walking on the wall.

Old bell

Photo shot. We saw quite a few of these. All the women were dressed in red.

Fancy tower.

The watchtowers were initially constructed twice the length of an arrow shot. Most of the watchtowers have not been reconstructed. This is one location where one used to be.

Panoramic of the city wall from the southeast corner. We pretty much had the place to ourselves!

Couple panoramics from outside the south gate.

Louis and Wendy with their spicy noodles. They even reordered, asking for "no spice" but it was still a bit on the spicy side.

I had rou jia mou, which is their hamburger equivalent. It's chopped pork in a lightly toasted bun.

We tried to go to the Small Wild Goose Pagoda but it was closed. We saw a bunch of beautiful metal pictures along the wall.

Emily, Wendy and Louise standing by the overnight train we rode from Xi'an to Beijing.

Francy and Me in our berth. 

Louise slept underneath me.

Emily and Wendy were on the other side of the compartment.

It was actually a bit challenging to get up on the top bunk, but Emily and I managed.

They even provided slippers for us to wear. (The fourth pair was white and isn't shown.)

We saw a bullet train leaving Beijing as we approached the train station.

Beijing train station at which we arrived.

Front of Forbidden City with picture of Chairman Mao from the Didi on the way to the hotel.

Tiananmen Square on the other side of the road.