Xi'an, day one

We flew out of Qingdao for Xi'an on Tuesday morning.  The airport in Xi'an is northeast of the city, must be a feng shui thing, it seems all Chinese airports are northeast of the city!

Our cab driver must have known the city very well, because without incident, he was able to get us to as close as possible to the hotel.  More on this later.

We found the hotel, it was in a pedestrian mall area with, of all things, a Walmart across the street!  the hotel was one in the Jinjiang Inn chain.  Clean and small.  Western toilet, yeah, AC, yeah, hot and cold water, yeah.  All anyone could want, well almost!

We went out to find some food and, of course, found ourselves in a mall.  We saw a Sichuan restaurant that looked promising and went in.  There was no English menu, but there was a picture menu...ok, this will be fun.  Well, who knew there were so many ways to prepare the same thing!

Looking at the pics we made some assumptions.... Clearly all incorrect!  We thought we ordered some lotus root, some beer, some pork, some chicken, and something in the shape of a smiley face that we thought would be fried dough. 

We were given some freebies of these little apple like fruits, and a jelly like thing cut into cubes.  Both were really tasty.  The jelly, a bit on the spicy side with a vinegar and onion kick as well.  The beers came and we settled back for a "lazy lunch".  Then the fun started!

These are the apple-like things

Here is the spicy jelly

This is the lotus, sadly, it is the only picture I have at this moment, Bill has others.  It was really good.  The sauce was sesame, garlic, soy, vinegar, and spicy.  We loved it.  This was the only identifiable dish we got!  

Next came the smiley face things.  They were mashed potato "cakes", not bad, but not what we thought, then came the chicken.  It was what we thought, fried chicken strips with....fries.  Oh, but the fun is only starting....    

the next dish, I thought was going to be twice cooked pork, but instead was more potatoes.  Fried potatoes with a cumin, white pepper, salt, Sichuan pepper, and scallion seasoning.  Not pork, but delicious!  We left fully carbed up and ready for some action.

Bill wandered around to try to get a hair cut and I snoozed.  We wandered out again to see the city.  It was starting to get dark and buildings were being lit up beautifully.  This is the bell tower near our hotel.

This was taken from the steps of a "swanky" new mall directly across the street from the tower.  After shooting this and other photos, we wandered in for dinner and went to a restaurant on the top floor that was called something like spice.  We ordered some things, all of which were good, but unmemorable.  What stood out was the internal glass elevator in the mall was positioned on an unfinished wall.  All of the cables, framing, and innards were left unpainted and uncovered up.  I kept thinking that any mall in the west would have finished that wall before putting up the elevator, or would at the very least covered up the housing to disguise the wall.  It's China, Jake.