Xi'an City Wall

In the middle of downtown Xi'an is the walled city.  I posted a few pictures of it in the Hash House Harriers post. It is number 2 on the TripAdvisor list of attractions to see in Xi'an so about three weeks ago Matt and I went to go see it.  It is supposed to be wider than it is tall and it is about 9 miles to go all the way around it.  It is so large that they rent bicycles out on the top.  There are about 11 different entry gates but it looked like only about 6 of them are open.

We consulted a map and chose the Anding Gate because it looked like it was the closest one to us.  Luckily, it was one of the ones that was open.  The ticket price to get onto the wall is 54 RMB or $9 US apiece.  We wanted to see it because we were thinking that it may be a good place to go for a long run as it can be rather difficult running in the city due to traffic.  The park is really nice, but crossing the street can be a pain. (Although I am getting better at timing the lights and dodging traffic.)

We went earlier in the day trying to better our chances of getting a taxi to pick us up.  We lucked out and got one fairly quickly who didn't try to charge us higher than the meter.  He dropped us off and pointed to where to go.  It was about 16 RMB.

The entrance looked like this.

Anding Gate Entrance

 When you walk in you see a courtyard that looks like this:

 Off to both of the sides there are  long staircases going up to the wall and that is where we entered.

 Once up top there were many people walking and bunches of people riding bikes as well as tuk tuks driving around for people who didn't want to walk.

 It is very wide up on the top with lots of room.

 We started walking around the wall. The stones are not always very even so you do have to watch where you are going but it is very nice.  The bathrooms were very clean and they had both western style and squatters.

 The signs are all posted in both English and Chinese.  I wanted to see the train station which is Anyuan Gate almost exactly halfway around from where we started.  We were trying to decide if we would take a train to Beijing for the half marathon or fly.  So after walking about 4.5 miles on the wall we exited the wall at the train station.

Xi'an Railway Station

The train station was a hub of activity.  There were no English signs at all.  Everything was in Chinese. It was kind of exhausting just being there so we pretty much decided... fly.  With that taken care of we decided to come back and run the following weekend.   Trying to get a taxi back from train station was not difficult.  There were tons.  Getting one that would not try to rip us off completely... not so easy.  One guy wanted 80 RMB.  Granted, we were farther away at this point but to go from 16 to 80? Please.  We said no and walked away from that spot because he was getting all his friends to try and get us to pay 80.  We were super tired of walking though by this time.  Eventually we found a guy who would take us for 50.  Fine, whatever.

The next weekend we were up and dressed to go running and empty taxi's just kept passing us by.  They wouldn't even stop for us.  We must have waited for 20 to 25 minutes.  Finally some guy stopped and said he would take us.  We had been just about to give up.  We were just about there and I noticed that he hadn't turned on the meter.  When we got there though, he clicked a button and the meter came on and it said 33.  Not sure how he did that, but the exact same ride had only cost 16 the weekend before.  Again, whatever, we would have offered 40 at that point to anyone who had stopped.

Anyway, we paid our $18 to get up on the wall again, and both did ten miles and felt much better.  It really was a nice run.  Tough on the legs because the bricks were uneven and not a forgiving surface but that is pretty much what we will be running on during the Great Wall Marathon so it is good training for that.  Also, it is a pretty amazing experience if you think about it.  During my run I was thinking, "I am running on the Xi'an City Wall!"

Ten miles done!

Afterwards, we stopped at one of the convenience stores up top and got some water, Gatorade, and snacks.  We were very hungry.

Afterwards, it took forever but we were finally able to get a taxi back.  He charged us meter price and it was under 20 RMB.  All in all, a pretty good day!