Thursday, July 14, 2016
Tour day 7 of 15: a travel day. Xi'an with Harry, then Chengdu with Jack. Breakfast buffet at Sheraton Xian North City. Packed. We visited the Wild Goose Pagoda, which was unfortunately surrounded by scaffolding that ruined its picturesqueness. A light rain fell occasionally. Rob, Akemi, and Jeremy paid to climb to the top. The view from the highest point they were permitted was mostly obscured by the scaffolding. Lunch at China Folk's Restaurant, another Chinese food feast in a private room in an elegant restaurant in a shopping mall. This restaurant had some dishes that are particular to Qin dynasty cuisine. Rode in the bus to the airport to fly to Chengdu. Weather before leaving Xi'an was 72 degrees Fahrenheit and rainy. Along the way we saw a few strange store signs: Topfeeling, and Birdbath Mutton (which was probably referring to hot pot because of the hotpot's shape). We passed through security check. Air China evening flight 8925 from Xi'an (XIY) to Chengdu (CTU). We were served a small bottled water and a chicken bun. Weather after arriving at Chengdu was about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and overcast with scattered light showers. Our guide for Chengdu, Jack, met us. We drove about 45 minutes to our hotel, Sofitel Taihe Chengdu. While turning left into the Sofitel driveway our bus nearly accidentally hit a rider of a scooter. Our rooms were split between the 8th and 9th floors. Floor 8 is a smoking floor, Floor 9 is a nonsmoking floor. Dad, Dex, Jeremy, and I got smoking rooms, which was very unpleasant for me because the hallway and our room had very strong cigarette smoke odors. (The hotel was out of non-smoking rooms.) It was odd seeing ash trays in the elevator lobby and on the desk in the hotel room. Lani stayed with Dad in the room he shared with Dex while the rest of us went searching on foot for a nearby Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), tired of having Chinese food every lunch and dinner for the past 6 days. We missed a turn but did not get too far off track and discovered brightly lit buildings and streets filled with activity: small shops and large shopping malls, street food. Many of the buildings are very colorfully lit like a less flashy version of Las Vegas buildings. Chengdu seems to have a lot more pet dogs than Xi'an and Beijing. At KFC it took a long time for us to order, and we relied somewhat on Kiana and Akemi to translate the menu choices. 120 yuan bought us a surprisingly small amount of food, and we ended up placing two more separate orders because we were still hungry. KFC was out of a lot of items because it was near closing. Afterwards we returned by foot to the hotel by a slightly faster route. To bed. Number of steps walked = 10,712.