After a long day on the Great Wall, we returned to Beijing with a few hours to spare before the train to Xi’an. Our original plans were disrupted by the busy Saturday afternoon subway delays and we instead found ourselves at Wangfujing Snack Street, famous for its skewers of live insects.
A portion of the Ming City Wall in Beijing. Part of the city’s defenses, the wall was 15 miles long, however all but 1.2 miles were destroyed to build new highways and subway lines. Construction also diverted us after a few steps and we found ourselves in a decidedly non-tourist maze of local alleyways, where we followed a group of locals past shops and restaurants back to the main road.
Looking in the window of our overnight train from Beijing to Xi’an. It was surprisingly comfortable and we were gently awakened around 7 a.m. by the piped-in traditional Chinese music. A rider accompanying his elderly mother woke us about an hour before that with three hours of nonstop conversation in the aisle.
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