Day 4 – Xian Food Tours – Colledge Adventures

Starting to write this and not sure if it’s going to be a quick one (bit tired) or longer (lots to share ;). Figured at this point you all might wonder if we didn’t have an evening update so here goes. We woke up very early to catch a 6:30 am high speed train to Xian. Great way to travel and easy to cover a lot of distance (300km/hr).

Getting off the train, we were heading in an elevator with a gentleman who appeared to be a conductor. Shepherd joyfully says “Hello”. And he isn’t quite sure how to respond, pats S’s head and says “you are beautiful”. We all got a few laughs out of that.

We visited a local mall for a quick lunch / new meaning to “make your own bowl” style place (mao tai)

The veggie section. The meat section was… “ripe”

Visited an interesting seafood market with massive crabs and sea worms:

We then visited the Tanbo art museum and practiced calligraphy. On our way out, Shepherd said he needed to “go tell the man something.” He runs back out a minute later and we ask what he said. He apparently told him “you really need to dust that piece of art”

Then, the highlight of the trip so far/ a food tour of the Muslim night market!
We first walked down the main strip with our new tour guide, “Olivia.”

And then met our guide for the night, Jessie. She was so great and runs the Xi’an lost plate food tour via tuktuk.

We started on little Leather road and the famous but teensy tiny bian bian noodle place. The noodles are named for this loud sound made when they are being prepared:

We then headed to Little study alley named for 1400 yrs as a local education hub. The boys tried plum juice (🤷‍♀️) but all loved the cumin grilled tenderloin. The place is only open four hours a day and only if fresh meat is available from the butcher. According to the boys “this is better than longhorn (phew!)”