Biking the city wall

Here is the original, totally in tact, city wall in Xian, China. We came to Xian for the main reason of going to see the Terra Cotta warriors. We were in the city for less than 24 hours but it was worth the extra effort it took to get there. Xian is another huge modern city like Beijing with a huge population -- many hundreds of thousands of people live here. Heidi, Paul, Quincy and I went to see the Terra Cotta warriors in the morning and then met up with Eric, Colton and Cory for lunch. Colton and Cory had been really sick for about 36 hours so they actually missed going to see the warriors. Hopefully, they'll get to go again before their time in China is over; they would have loved seeing them. After we all went to lunch, we decided to go to the old city wall where we had heard that you can bike around the whole wall. This place was amazing! Just stunning. To think that it is still standing and in such prestine condition after hundreds of years -- I forgot exactly how old it is but I think about 400 years old.

By the way, notice the beautifully landscaped park area there in the photo. That is how so much of China looks. They do an amazing job of landscaping. Almost always, the plants are laid out in a very artistic, flowing design with many different colored plants used as highlights and contrasts. It must be a fung shui thing.

There were about 100 steps to climb up to the top of the wall but I wasn't prepared for how huge this wall was on top. It reminded me of the Great Wall with all the extra, security towers on every corner and bigger buildings randomly placed along the wall's corridor. We only had enough time to ride about 1/4th of the entire distance and that took us about 45 minutes. This was really a cool experience. Heidi and Eric were on tandem bikes with Cory and Quincy and Paul & I each had our own bikes. You could pay for the bikes and pick them up at one gate and drop them off at any other gate along the wall so you could go as far as you wanted to or stop when you had had enough. Very convenient.