First Night in Xia'n

After exploring the city wall, my family went to the bell tower. We had dinner at a great place near the city wall, with lots of different types of dumplings and vegetable dishes. We had a really kind waitress who wanted to practice her English with my family, and wanted to make sure that we liked all of the dishes that we at. There were a lot of people walking around the bell tower square, probably due to the national holiday. It definitely felt like being in a big city. The one thing I noticed about Xi'an was how the city keeps growing and growing. It's no longer this old city, but there are so many new buildings. I think this is a sad aspect of China's rapid growth. I'm not sure what will happen to the old beautiful parts of the city. It was so wonderful though getting to walk around the old drum tower and the older parts of the city. The one thing I realized also that with traveling with my entire family, it was so nice to have a car to drive us places in Xia'n. I'm not sure what we would have done piling five people in two different taxis. We all returned back to the hotel and were exhausted from our long day that had begun at 5:00 a.m. We all slept so well, and the beds at the hotel were actually really soft, small, but soft nonetheless.