China — Day 4: June 2019

Thursday, June 20, 2019

Day 4 we arrived in Xi’an via the overnight “soft sleeper train.” It was a fun experience and everyone actually slept reasonably well — the slow rocking of the train all night probably helped, though “soft” does not describe the hardness of the beds.

After we checked into the hotel and freshened up, we enjoyed a traditional Chinese lunch (with a detour to a local grocers to pick up some “supplemental” food for Esme) and then went to the Tangbo Art Museum. There were a lot of interesting pieces, though the part the kids enjoyed the best was when we had a chance to try doing some calligraphy. (It’s much harder than it looks!)

From there we went to the Xi’an City Wall, the most complete original city walls in China. The weather held off for the most part, at least enough that we got to take a short bike ride on the wall which provided a nice view (and a good outlet for some pent-up energy). Brynn and Esme got noticed by some local girls and became quite the popular attraction, with a line surrounding them to take their picture.

That evening, Mimi and Leslie wanted to go to the dumplings dinner and dinner show, so Jeff stayed with the kids and gave into their demands to find some “American” food. There wasn’t a pizza restaurant nearby but we did locate a McDonalds that was about a 15 minute walk from our hotel.

You can always go to the SmugMug gallery to view or download all of the pictures and video or order prints directly from SmugMug.