Early start today in order to make the high speed train departing at 9:50am. Believe it or not the alarm had to be set for 6am as we knew the short car ride to the station would be in peak morning Beijing traffic and we had to be at the station an hour before departure. Turns out it took approx 45mins to cover 10km in the chaos of cars, mopeds, bikes, trikes and pedestrians….worse than Sydney traffic!
The train station experience was not too arduous with security check on the way in, similar to an airport really. Passport once again was the ticket which was scanned once through security and then again to get onto the platform. The getting onto the platform was amazingly orderly given there were over 1000 humans heading for the same train… its a problem if you happen to be claustrophobic.
We had no problem finding our seats on the G55 to Xi’an.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing–Xi%27an_high-speed_train and 4hrs passed quickly enough. Travel speeds over 350km/hr and super quiet and snack trolley came around regularly for anyone with the munchies.
Jumped into another Didi (Uber) on arrival and settled into a MUCH nicer hotel (The Sheraton) In Xi’an for 2 nights…somewhat more expensive but not much over our budget and we found dinner for $16 AUD at a local mall consisting of poke bowl, sushi and a Raman so offset saving made there 😋.
Early night tonight ready for Terracotta Army tour tomorrow with pick up at 8am.
