Silk Road Tour - Day 1

Starting Off on the Left Foot
The 13 day tour started off scratchlessly enough, the plane flew at pm1:50 instead of the usual ungodly hour of 8am (when you'd have to get to the airport 2 hour before, which usually meant waking up at 4.30am... not a good start at all).

Just a couple of minor hitches: we were taking China Airlines, which has had some really bad accidents (knock wood hard) in the last ten years. Still, their airplanes are squeaky new, and had like 5mm extra leg room, so... okay. (Incidentally China Airlines is actually the national carrier for Taiwan, not China. Why is it called 'China' Airlines? Loonnnnggg story...)

The 2nd hitch was, we were transiting in Hong Kong, again! That immediately added 2-3 hours to the whole flying time, or sitting around in boring airports time, or in this case, hanging around in long lines, and doing surplus security checks. Whatever happened to DIRECT FLIGHT to China from Taiwan? When are we going to experience that, WHEN?

Anyway, couldn't fault China Airlines, stewardesses were helpful and friendly, food was ok, lots of pillows and blankets. The second leg on Hong Kong Airlines (which is a small airline mostly flying to China) was... nyeah, not great. Food frankly sucked. Okay, I don't remember what the heck I ate, but I remember it sucked.

Xi'an
Rants aside, we arrived at Xi'an on time at pm7:35 (another nice, respectable hour), got our luggage, met our tour guide, and got on the tour bus, which hands-down had the narrowest leg room I've ever experienced in my life, and that's saying a lot. Did I say 'rants-aside'? I can't stop ranting it seems.

Arrived at our hotel, the scrumptious Xi'an Garden Hotel, great gardens, fantastic lobby, lovely lake with hanging willows, peacocks and ducks... it's 10pm after a late dinner, and we're too tired to appreciate all this... but lovely. Oh but the elevator doesn't work, and we're on the 4th floor. Lovely.

We were leaving Xi'an early the next morning (definitely no lay-ins on organized tours, it's busy busy touring everyday starting off before 8am), but we'd be back at the end of the tour, so I hoped we'd get more impressions of the city then. But for Day 1, we were tired from all the planes and airports and turned in early. No late night rambles on the outside for us.