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We had an 8:15 AM start and climbed to the top of the Xi’an City Wall. It runs around the perimeter of the old city and is 14 kilometers long. The group had a self guided bike tour, so I spent the time walking around and enjoying the scenery.
Beautiful view of the Bell Tower on our way to the City Walls
Tower on the City Wall
The City Wall was beautiful & even had a garden on top of it
The rental bicycles lined up along the City Wall
The City Wall seemed to go on forever
View of Xi’an
After the city wall, we boarded a bus to the Muslim Quarter of the city. It was absolutely bustling with food stalls & a bazaar.
Street Food cooking
A view down the street
At the suggestion of our tour guide, we tried a sandwich with braised beef /pork. It was delicious.
Muslim Quarter
Muslim Quarter
The bazaar was bustling
I also visited the Great Mosque of Xi’an. It was my first time visiting a mosque and was more beautiful and serene than I could have imagined!
Great Mosque of Xi’an
We then departed the Muslim Quarter and headed to the airport for our flight to Shanghai. There were really bad thunderstorms in Shanghai, so we were delayed for 6 hours. We even boarded our flight and had to get back off to wait in the airport! We finally arrived in Shanghai at 10:30 PM, but didn’t make it to our hotel until midnight. All the shuttle buses from the airport stopped running, so we walked past a taxi queue that was at least 150 people deep. It’s a good thing we have a tour bus!
Our tour guide was able to reshuffle almost everything so we don’t miss a lot. The only thing we won’t be able to do is a nighttime cruise to see the Shanghai skyline, but that would have been canceled because of the rain and fog in the city anyway!
We were told to go to bed and get a good rest because we will do all of Shanghai in a day tomorrow! I can’t wait!