Thursday March 12th…
As everyone back home was getting ready to leave for sunny destinations on their spring break we decided to travel North to Xi’an and then east to Qingdao to take a 4-day Spring Break…and surprisingly the weather was gorgeous!
We left rainy Shanghai after our Exam was over…I think by the time the QQ’s showed up to take us to the airport it was about 10:30AM. So what is a QQ…A QQ is an illegal taxi. Some might call them black Taxi’s but in Shanghai they are called QQ’s because that is the type of car they are. It is a very compact 4 door car, that I am sure would not pass any crash test…but they are much cheaper than normal taxis so we had 3 of them pick us up at the dorms to take us to the Pudong airport. They got us there in an hour, which is really fast. They didn’t sit and wait for anything. The ride was like a roller coaster, one minute we were weaving between cars and the next we were just driving on the sidewalk to get away from the cars altogether and before we knew it we were sitting in the terminal waiting for our flight.
Pudong airport is HUGE!!!!! We were in Terminal one, just in the C concourse and there were over 200 gates!! It was insane. And of course, our gate was the second to last one J we boarded the plane and made it to Xi’an. We arranged for someone from our hostel to pick us up at the airport so they were waiting for us when we go there…It was extremely nice not to worry about finding cabs and figuring out where to go.
We stayed at Shauna International Youth Hostel. It was just inside of the city walls by the main South Gate. This hostel was adorable!!! There was so much character and such a Chinese feel to it with many great common areas. There were little courtyards through the hostel with couches and tables; a lot of space to just sit down and relax. The hostel had a cute restaurant area and a fun bar in the basement. Our rooms were on the roof. The hostel was extremely accommodating. Originally the 11 of us were going to be split up all over the hostel but they arranged it so we could have two rooms to ourselves for both nights in Xi’an. The community showers/bathrooms were really clean. Upon checking in we received a free beer card to be redeemed at the bar downstairs for each night that we were spending in the hostel and we also received a free cup of coffee/tea at the little restaurant. The people at the front desk were all very helpful and spoke English very well.
So after getting checked in to our perfect little hostel we decided to walk around and explore Xi’an. We walked up to the bell tower (At the center of the city walls) and found some pineapple on a stick. For those of you who don’t know me well I usually only eat pineapple two ways…one being on a Hawaiian pizza, and two being from my mom’s pineapple glazed baked ham….mmm that is so delicious!!! In any case, I ate this pineapple it was fantastic. Super sweet and delicious…and only 1RMB. Shortly after the pineapple we stopped in a restaurant and had a nice dinner.
After dinner we continued on our adventure walking around the city and we found a little roller-skating area. People had skates that could be rented. At first I wasn’t going to go roller-skating because I didn’t like the idea of where all of those roller-skates had been. But as the guys started picking out their roller-skates the guy gave them plastic bags to wrap their feet in before putting the roller skates on…when I saw the bags I decided to go roller-skating. The skating area was around a circular fountain (that wasn’t turned on) super small and something that would never survive in America but it was one of those great China things. We had a good time skating around. After we got tired we returned the skates and our shoes were still there…which we weren’t entirely sure they would be, and continued walking around the city.
The City of Xi’an is a great city from what I saw. Being inside the city walls was cool. It is really mind boggling to think that is the same wall that surrounded the city back when Xi’an was the capital of China during the first Dynasty (around 2000 years ago).
After walking around for a while we jumped in a taxi and headed back to the hostel’s bar. I had a few beers (including my free one J) and then headed up stairs to go to bed.
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