Days 4 and 5 of the Grand Tour -- Xi'an and Urumqi
After visiting the Terra-cotta Warriors in Xi'an, we had dinner at a local restaurant recommended by the guidebook. The "yang-rou-pao-mo" was excellent (but I think it was almost as good at the hole-in-the-wall place where we had lunch the next day). Basically it's bread pieces in a mutton soup with mutton, onion, maybe some cilantro, and some other spices. It's a Xi'an specialty, and it's quite tasty. After dinner, we wandered through a tent market with souvenirs and lots of dried fruit and then down the walking street by the Drum Tower and browsed for a while (Daniel's favorite!) The next day, we went back to the street for lunch, and then to the Xi'an city walls. We rented bikes, and rode on the wall, 14 km around the old city. A little hot, and noticeably polluted (as China's cities tend to be), but quite nice. After our exercise, we wandered the downtown part of the city by the Bell Tower, then back to the walking street for street food before we caught a taxi to the airport for our flight to the wild wild West!
Our first full day in Xinjiang province (Urumqi is the capital) we took a day trip to Turpan, about a 2.5 hour bus ride. Turpan is in a basin, and is actually the second lowest spot on earth, next to the Dead Sea. It is therefore quite hot. Forty degrees Celsius hot, in fact. That's 105 degrees Fahrenheit. So we took a walk (to Daniel's delight!). The goal was the Emin Minaret, some 3 km from the long distance bus station. I had copied the map from the travel book, and thought the walk would give us an opportunity to see the city, so I felt good about the walk. Except I had forgotten that although Xinjiang is officially on Beijing time, it's actually several hours behind, meteorologically speaking. So what I thought was South, judging by the sun, was actually North, because although it was 14:40 the sun was still in the East. Minor miscalculation. We figured it out about 20 minutes later, and set off in the right direction (Daniel complaining in the faux British accent the whole time). We finally made it to the minaret, after touring a good deal of the city on foot. The minaret is beautiful; the tall adobe tower seems to rise from the middle of grape fields, the patterns in the brick stand out against the blue sky.
We decided to take a taxi back to the bus station.
Our first full day in Xinjiang province (Urumqi is the capital) we took a day trip to Turpan, about a 2.5 hour bus ride. Turpan is in a basin, and is actually the second lowest spot on earth, next to the Dead Sea. It is therefore quite hot. Forty degrees Celsius hot, in fact. That's 105 degrees Fahrenheit. So we took a walk (to Daniel's delight!). The goal was the Emin Minaret, some 3 km from the long distance bus station. I had copied the map from the travel book, and thought the walk would give us an opportunity to see the city, so I felt good about the walk. Except I had forgotten that although Xinjiang is officially on Beijing time, it's actually several hours behind, meteorologically speaking. So what I thought was South, judging by the sun, was actually North, because although it was 14:40 the sun was still in the East. Minor miscalculation. We figured it out about 20 minutes later, and set off in the right direction (Daniel complaining in the faux British accent the whole time). We finally made it to the minaret, after touring a good deal of the city on foot. The minaret is beautiful; the tall adobe tower seems to rise from the middle of grape fields, the patterns in the brick stand out against the blue sky.
We decided to take a taxi back to the bus station.
posted by Mike and Jean Anne at 9:04 AM
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