Two weeks in China, Part 2

After my first week traveling through China I made it to the ancient city of X'ian. Surprisingly, X'ian was actually a very developed city. I say surprisingly because when I asked people about traveling to X'ian most people either said it wasn't worth seeing or that the Terra Cotta Warriors were the only thing worth seeing. I disagree. In my opinion, X'ian had the best food of all the cities that I traveled to, had some very interesting markets and a good number of historical sites other than the Terra Cotta Warriors.

With that said I will say that the Terra Cotta Warriors are not to be missed. They are a pretty amazing scene. The admission was a bit expensive but worth it for a one time experience.

From X'ian I took an overnight train to Beijing. Beijing was much less crowded than I expected. It was a large city but from the stories I heard from other travelers and people who are from Beijing I expected to see people shoulder to shoulder everywhere I went. It was pretty manageable even on the subways. I took the typical tourist route through the city. I went to Tiananmen Square, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and of course the Great Wall of China. All these places have so much history and it was really cool to finally see them in person. The most surprising of all was the trip to the Great Wall. I expected to take a long hike up to the Wall and a long one down but this is 2013 so that wasn't what I experienced. I took a cable car up to the start of the section of the Wall that o visited. I spent about two hours walking the wall and and taking in the scene. It didn't hurt that about every few hundred feet there was a nice old lady selling drinks and snacks. It is truely a great site and is daunting to think how much work it took to build. After the trip was over I didn't hike down the hill, I didn't take the cable car down the hill. Oh no, I took the roller coaster down from the wall to the base where my tour bus was located. It was quite the experience. 

Although Beijing was cool the next city I traveled to was probably my favorite, which was Shanghai. Shanghai is a very modern and clean city. Although other told me the food was somewhat bland, I actually liked most of the food I had in Shanghai. A for flavor is doesn't compare to what you'll find in Chengdu but it pretty tasty. Also, it's a super young city with a lot to do and great public transportation. The things people say about the smog is very true. The first few days I was there, the smog was so thick that I could take picture of the city because I could see anything more than 100 feet in front of me. This is so prevalent that the city has cardboard cutouts of the skyline set up downtown so you can take a picture with the skyline in the background even on the most smog filled day. 

My trip to China was great and I really look forward to going back.