Sisterhood Travels to Xian

Iona

Started off our fourth day in Chengdu at 7:45am, opening with a buffet styled breakfast that would fuel us for the busy day ahead. We went back into our rooms to pack and organise all of our belongings as we were checking out of the hotel promptly at 9am. Maya and Mr. Wong came to pick us up, and we went on our way to the Wuhou Shrine. This shrine was built in 1672, during the Qin Dynasty and was one of two graves above ground that had not been broken into/ tampered with in history. The shrine was right next to Jinli, a shopping street filled with different stores and stands, and so the Sisterhood spent the rest of the morning walking through the street and found a few things to bring home which we are all very excited about.


After the successes in gift buying ;), we went to our last lunch in a crowded and informal restaurant that fed us many yummy dumplings and also delicious eggplants- a key theme this trip! Another win this afternoon was getting Mr. Fan and Maya to eat lunch with us, but that win was promptly followed by an L when Mr. Fan hit a bike as he backed up out of our parking space. After carefully manoeuvring out, we were able to make it to the train station for 1:30pm, and make it inside the very crowded and chaotic building. Our train left at 2:30pm so arriving an hour before hand felt like a smart idea, yet the extra time gave us little comfort as we found ourselves getting pushed every which way by people in the large crowds outside our entrance. Learning to be aggressive, the Sisterhood made their way to the third car of the train and were all seated in one row.

We had a tough time finding our guide and driver once we had exited the train station; it got to the point where we were considering taking a taxi to the hotel since we had the address. In the end, Liz pulled though with pointing out a sign that said “meeting place” which is where our guide and driver came running over to us! So glad everything worked out in the end as we were all very tired and ready for the hotel at that point. Dinner at a restaurant happened on the way to the hotel and we were introduced to the city of Xian in the car ride. This city has over 1.300 years of history and was named Changan in the Han dynasty as the capitol city of the Shaanxi province. The Sisterhood is very excited to explore the city of Changan!