Silk Road Expedition, Sept. 8, Day 8 – Xian to Luoyang

Not too much occurred that particular day, to be totally honest. After checking out of the hotel, we all briefly toured the Small Goose Pagoda and the neighboring museum on Xian’s long and extensive history.

Boo!

I remember taking the above picture quite well, because precisely one second later a museum guard yelled at me for taking photos. 

After that, we had lunch on our own, and then it was time to hit the road for a six-hour drive to Luoyang, another site of several capitals of long-gone ancient dynasties (Luoyang claims to be the capital of the most ancient dynasties, but it’s hard to believe them because Xian claims the same title.) The bus trip, while quite bumpy (which made it totally impossible for me to catch up on my journaling, unless I wanted pages upon pages of illegible chicken scratch) wasn’t particularly exciting, though we did get some spectacular mountain views (one of which is one fo the holiest mountains in Taoism, but I don’t know which one specifically), and we even enjoyed some glimpses of the mighty Yellow River itself. 

I also had my first taste of hot pot, in which one picks what they want off a menu, and then it’s all cooked in a bubbling broth right in the middle of one’s table. The meal was enjoyable….except for the part that the waitresses all huddled around us for all too obvious reasons. They honestly wouldn’t let me serve myself a spoonful of the noodles we ordered; the only way I could pull it off was when they weren’t looking. I’ll admit, I wasn’t exactly a fan of being babied.

All in all, a so-so day, save the troubles I had managing the hotel bathroom. I don’t know for sure, but I feel like that the folks who constructed the room originally forgot to put a bathroom in, and just threw everything into a spare closet. What you see there is literally everything (save most of the "tub").