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Saturday 2005-09-24 - Xi'an, China
Lazy day in Xi’an
I’m up late after yesterday’s busy day in Xi’an. I have a light breakfast at the cafeteria downstairs (two delicious balls of vegetables with a spicy sauce but to my surprise they have no tea today!). The rest of the morning I spend checking out, parking my luggage in the luggage room and catching up with my writing.
After lunch I go out with our tour companion Marie Josee to scout out another Internet cafe she spotted in the corner of the square across the street from the hotel. We find it’s very hot inside (in spite of the fans turning on the ceiling) and more expensive than yesterday’s Internet cafe to boot so we go back there. It’s been overcast, very dark today, and just when we arrive at the Internet cafe it starts to rain lightly. After two hours typing and (mostly) catching up I stop: I had planned to walk around anther area of the city that we saw from the taxi yesterday; I’m afraid it will be too dark if I continue typing any longer.
Alas, when I get out it’s not only raining harder but also much darker than I expected. I walk to the old quarter anyway. Once there I try to take some pictures, smuggling with exposure times otherwise it’s impossible to take any. The area is very interesting in terms of town planning: tree-lined streets without real sidewalks but the houses are all built on a much higher level than the streets: the difference of up to two meters is bridges with steps up to the entrances and oblique walls; sometimes there’s a path on the upper level to reach the mostly walled yards. It’s really hard to describe — I hope my pictures turn out.
I give up on my other plan to climb the North gate of the city wall and take more pictures from there — it’s really too dark now. Clearly I’ll have to come back to Xi’an once more: there’s still plenty of interesting things to see and do here.
At nine we go to the station again to catch the night train to Lanzhou.
