Day 22 - Pingyao

Pingyao,

After everything that happened last night, we slept right thorough till 10am. Then were taken back to our hotel and officially checked in to our room that we will be staying in for another 3 nights. We showered, got dressed and made plans to find some lunch & to explore. It had been nearly 24 hours since we had a proper meal and our stomachs were loudly protesting!

The weather in Pingyao is a fresh +2/-4 today, finally time to test out our new thermals! We found a restaurant and ordered large meals with extra rice, all the food quickly vanished shortly after landing on our table. Once we had filled our stomachs we set off exploring.

A little bit off the beaten track, Pingyao is located in the middle of the Shanxi Province, North China & is more than 2700 years old.The ancient city is surrounded by a wall, originally built in 1370. Entirely different from the wall in Xi'an. The wall of Pingyao is significantly smaller (6 kilometres long) & a lot of areas are rough, exposed clay with only some brick work. The city wall has 6 gates & is said to be shaped like a turtle, Pingyao is nicknamed turtle city. This ancient city has, 4 major streets, 8 lesser streets & 72 winding & twisting lanes, entirely made of various brickwork. It is a maze & very easy to loose yourself. The major streets feel a little bit commercialised with souvenir shops, and many tourists & flashy signs, the ancient authenticity a little lost. In the lesser streets you can easily forget you are in the 21st century.

A few hours exploring was all that we got from the day, we brought some beer and headed back to our accommodation to finish the day off watching the sun go down from the rooftop balcony.  Once the sun went down and it was dark, approximately 8pm, we put on additional jumpers, scarves and gloves before setting out to explore the night life.

A city can be totally transformed once the blanket of darkness falls. We walked the major streets within the ancient city, listening to karaoke, trying various street food, browsing through gift shops (wishing we had room in our packs & more muscles) & posing for more photos with people. As of today, when people ask us for a photo (a daily occurrence) we are also going to ask for one in return. It's going to make for one big, cool collection of photos showing us integrating with people of various cultures. We will share at the end of our trip!

By 10pm we were heading home! Not a very big day for us, only 12km's of exercise, but still very tired from the previous night.

- Alli