Saturday, July 19 Cut to the chase. We made it!
We woke up extra early, checked out of our super cute Yide Hotel (Josh calls it a very well preserved, traditional courtyard house) and walked to the slightly shadier hostel that would actually arrange for us to hop on a bus in the middle of a highway. Our hotel would not arrange such illicit tickets for us and the workers there were concerned that this was our plan, but the only trains through Pingyao to Xi’an left at late evening and we needed a morning departure. I am actually no longer so certain that the hostel lady is truly a CITS agent. I think that Pingyao does not have a CITS office and she is maybe a helper – or a go between – or a friend of CITS – but really I think she is a Red, a man who knows how to get things, and we are Andy.
We had a pricey breakfast at the shady but kind-seeming hostel and then rode an open air pedicab to the highway, an experience in itself. Josh offered to throw luggage overboard or run alongside and push the tiny cart like a bobsled when it appeared our vehicle was struggling on the highway. When we got to our improvised highway meeting point, others were there as well for pickup and we were pleasantly surprised when the bus actually came and picked us up. Unfortunately, the bus ticket black market does not properly account for number of seats and Josh had to make do on a stool on the floor in the aisle (a stool that was about 6 inches tall).
But we are now in Xi’an in one piece with all our luggage. We made very good time on the bus arriving aroung 3pm. We checked in to our new hotel, the Bell Tower Hotel. We got plane tickets to Guilin and a ride arranged from Guilin to our hotel there. We toured the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower, strolled the Muslim Quarter and the nearby night market (where we grabbed some street food) and now we are settled in for some outdoor drinks on a happening, yet fairly quaint, bar street Josh remembered from his previous trip here.
Tomorrow it is the Terracotta Army.
We got caught in a big rain storm on the walk home from the bar.
Sent from my BlackBerry wireless device
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