We made it to our hotel in Xian last night around 11:00. It was a long but very fun filled last day in Beijing. We had been moving at a fairly torrid pace and elected to have a more relaxed morning. Christi’s phone has not been working (FYI to anyone trying to text her) so I dropped by the Apple store to no avail. Later in the morning, we took a rickshaw tour of the Hutong neighborhood. This neighborhood is over 200 years old. Beijing use to consist of mostly “Hutong” style neighborhoods but all the others have been torn down for newer buildings. This one is now protected and was a real treat to visit. We gathered in a local home for what has been our favorite meal of the trip. It was really good! The girls got to learn how to make their own kites from a kite master. We took those kite to the Temple of Heaven that afternoon. The Temple of Heaven was constructed in the early 1400’s (about the same time as the Forbidden City) and was used to pray for good harvest. Today, the facility is used mainly as a tourist site and a local park. Our guide called it a natural oxygen tank due to all the trees. The smog in Beijing was noticeable but we we’re fortunate to catch it during a milder period. We did not need to break out our mask yet. That may change today though as Xian evidently has even worse smog.

Xian was the capital city of China during several dynasties. We will visit the still intact city wall today and attend a calligraphy class. Our hotel is really nice but you can tell by the breakfast we have moved more Mainland. We had many noodle options and I could not recognize about half of our options. We are going to be pretty tired of boiled eggs by the time we make it back home!