July 11 -- Last day in Beijing and overnight train to Xian

Today was uneventful, for us a day of rest.

In the afternoon we visited one of the last old neighborhoods in Beijing, a "hutong;" a few blocks of one or two story run down residences and shops being restored so that future tourists might view a sample the "charming neighborhoods" where once lived most of Beijing's residents. Unfortunately it was dwarfed by the massive contemporary Beijing skyline all around, where there was never a building without at least a dozen of its exact duplicates parallel to it, all lined up, with little space in between, against the brownish gray sky. I saw nothing worth photographing.

We left Beijing that evening on an overnight train, first class accommodations, to Xian. There were four of us in the sleeping compartment, Jen and I and two women also on our tour. I was assigned one of the two top bunks. I immediately thought that using the the one rung on the wall to get up there would be a major challenge, but soon I mastered this and even enjoyed the feat which reminded me of summers at camp as a kid. The real challenge was to fall asleep on the hard narrow board that was to be my bunk.

In retrospect that part of the trip was fun and had a lot comic relief. Foremost, perhaps, was the sight of my fellow passengers, going back and forth in the narrow corridor during the night to the one "western" toilet at the end of the car, each clutching in one hand a small bottle of hand sanitizer and in the other a precious roll of toilet paper that "Mark" had wisely advised us to take from our hotel for the long train ride.