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The anti-destination wedding

holly — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:09:26 +0000

Let’s just get this out there – I am a bride to be, a travel agent, and I am not having a destination wedding.

I’ve been getting the comments a lot. As soon as someone finds out I’m either engaged or in the travel industry, the next question is always “so, what tropical island are you getting married on?” It’s automatically assumed that I’m hauling all our friends and family to some exotik locale to be married at sunset with the romantic palm trees swaying gloriously behind us while local monkeys play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on hollowed out coconuts. When I explain that no, our ceremony is going to be local, the reaction is always a let-down “oh, well I’m sure that will be lovely too”. Now, as much as I would love that dream wedding straight out of a 2-hour ABC Bachelorette Wedding Special (particularly the musical primates), we honestly only considered a destination wedding for about 3.5 seconds before vetoeing it, and have never second-guessed or regretted the decision. Let me explain.

First and foremost is always the financial reason. With most of the all-lnclusive resorts now offering great all-inclusive wedding packages for a great low fee, the cost of a destination wedding can be substantially less than your standard find all the vendors/rent the chairs/hire a DJ wedding. I’ve booked them, and there are some smoking deals out there for as little as CAD$1500 that includes the full wedding, decorations, cake, flowers and dinner for up to 15 people. The catch with this is that, while it’s costing the couple (or their parents, or whoever’s paying for the actual wedding) less, that’s because you’re essentially dividing the cost up amongst your guests. At CAD$800 – $2000 or more per person (plus tax), that’s a lot to ask of the important people in your life. If there are families with kids, that could be CAD$8000 easily just for the family to come, which is a massive commitment. Conversely, if you have the wedding locally, it could cost as little as gift, parking and dry cleaning per person. For just that reason, destination weddings usually get a lot of people who are unable to attend. In our case there was no room in the budget to chip in and help out our guests with the cost, and I would much rather have the most important people around me on my big day, than the random handful of people who could afford to make it. I talked to one destination Bride a few months ago whose side of the family was not as well-off as her Groom’s, and almost everyone on her side RSVP’d no – except her parents, best friend, an Aunt she didn’t particularly like, and her hairdresser. His whole family showed up. She walked away gloriously happy to be married, but still somewhat heartbroken over the guest situation.

Another one of the advertised selling points for destination wedding packages is that they’re stress free, you just show up and everything’s already taken care of for you. Personally, to me that’s a huge turn off. Isn’t a wedding supposed to be a reflection of the couple? How is inserting yourself into a cookie-cutter “this is what a wedding should look like” mold saying anything about you? Maybe that’s my control freak side rearing it’ ugly head, but I cannot imagine not having my fingers firmly planted in every piece of the wedding pie. Our colours, quirky table names, non-floral centerpieces, postcard guest book, and buffet from one of our favorite restaurants paints a great picture about who we are and what we love that I can’t imagine trusting anyone else with those details. Who am I kidding, I wouldn’t trust my Groom to do certain things, let alone some random “resort co-ordinator” I’ve only ever communitcated with through broken-English emails.

And then there’s the logisitcs of it all. Getting married in another country (or state or city even) requires you to research their local rules and regulations and make sure you comply by them, or your marriage might not be stress free/legal at all. A friend of mine arrived in the Dominican Republic all ready to get married only to discover the day before her wedding that unless your marriage license is in Spanish it’s not legal (please double check all laws, this may have changed since). It’s not exactly easy to find someone who can translate legal documents Spanish at 9pm at night so you can file it the next morning the second the office opens to make sure you still make your 1pm aisle time. Then you have to take that giant dress on the plane with you. I got a frantic call from a Bride once who was checking in at the airport and Air Canada informed her that her dress was too big to be carried on the plane with her, since the other passengers had already filled the limited special closet space on the plane. This entire wedding package had been arranged with Air Canada Vacations, including the air and all the accomodation, they had been expecting her to be carrying on her dress, and they still forced her to wrap it in the provided plastic baggies and take it down into cargo. There was no other option, unless she was willing to wait 24 hours for the next flight and hope to get her dress on with her that time. It all came out fine, the dress was a little rumpled when they arrived, but she later told me she was a total wreck that whole flight, worried that something horrible was going to happen to her stupid expensive dream wedding dress.

Plus, getting a large group to travel together is like herding cats. For the most part this is where the travel agent comes in, as they have to worry about co-ordinating departure and arrival times from different destination cities, and making sure everything and everyone is arranged and paid on time. But no matter what there are always those questions that only the Bride and Groom can answer. “Why do I have to fly on this date?” “Can we all get small rooms and spend our evenings hanging out in the giant honeymoon suite with the couple?” “I will not pay a single supplement or share a room with cousin Rita. What are you going to do about it?” This is not exactly the most stress-free planning situation, as family politics always comes into play, big time. In my case, I can’t imagine unleashing my amazing family and friends on another Travel Agent (when they were going to be asking me the questions anyway), but that would add a whole level of “work” to the fun of wedding planning.

And finally, there’s the most trivial, but also one of the most important reasons why we’re not having a destination wedding: humidity. It sounds freaking ridiculous, I know, but I have naturally curly hair, that, when taken into a climate with any type of humitidy, curls up and pouffs out like a Jewish schoolboy’s. No amount of product I’ve ever been able to find can tame the beast. While I can’t imagine this being too big a deal the day of, as it would only take a minute or so for me to be so wrapped up in the sheer amazing wedding-ness of it that I no longer cared what my hair looked like, I can’t imagine looking back on my pictures years later and think that I looked horrible. I want that moment I can hang on my wall forever, not one where I look at it and ask why I stuck that fork in an electrical socket while wearing such a pretty dress. Ladies, you know what I mean. This is the one chance we all have for that truly perfect day, and it’s also the one time I feel no shame about being vain enough to not want to ruin it. So I’d have to have a destination wedding indoors, which defeats the purpose of having a destination on in the the first place.

And that, my friends, is why I am actually overjoyed to be getting married at home.

China day 8: It all ends with a mall. Or five.

holly — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 23:55:41 +0000

Ahh, the final morning in China. It dawned sunny and fresh and relaxing. Today, I was on a mission. I had managed to get all the way though the trip without finding a gift for my Fiancee, and today I was going to fix that. But what do you get a guy who won’t eat anything produced in China, has a long torso that doesn’t fit Asian sizes well, and doesn’t really appreciate souvenirs unless they serve some practical use? There goes my go-to fridge magnet idea. Crap. Needless to say, all my friends were all taken care of and the one person I know pretty much better than anyone is getting nothing. So my plan for the free morning was to hit the malls and find him the awesome gift of awesomeness.

Our guide had said that all the shops opened at nine, and since I’m not really one for sleeping in, I left at 8 to walk through the bustling streets of Shanghai and find those mega shopping malls I had seen in the dark last night. I knew approximately which skyscraper they were near, so I just started wandering, getting a real taste for daily life in Shanghai. The streams of people pouring out of the metro stations, the people walking their small, well-clothed dogs (coveralls? Parkas? Adidas track suits with matching trainers? On a Pekinese? Really?), the shopkeepers rolling back their metal security screens… it was lovely. Incredibly peaceful to walk around in this incredibly non-peaceful city. I loved it. I also had thought it was going to take me longer to reach the malls, as it had seemed much farther away at night. So I found myself in a KFC playing Angry Birds on my iPad, sipping the drink I had bought simply to justify my using their bathroom and table. Side note – somehow I had managed to make it all the way to Shanghai without using a squat toilet. Pretty much everywhere had well-marked western-style toilets, or at least a wheelchair accessable one (turns out, disabled people can’t squat), and worse case scenario I’d had to wait a few extra minutes to get the stall I wanted. But Shanghai ruined my streak. Nice comfy seated toilets were a lot harder to come by, but it had been an unexpectedly good run, lol .

Turns out the shops didn’t open at 9. I was there, all ready and waiting, and all the windows were still dark. So I wandered the streets of Shanghai, observing, window shopping in closed stores, playing more Angry Birds in another KFC with another drink for another hour. Turns out that had been some bad information from the guide, as everything opened at 10am sharp. On the upside, I was now very familiar with all the streets around this particular area of Shanghai, so I had a very small chance of getting lost on the way back to the hotel. Time to shop, finally. There were 5 malls here, each larger than it’s predecessor, and all specializing in name brand everything. Minimum of 9 storeys per mall, times 5 malls… I went up and down all of them, not wanting to miss the one thing that would be the perfect gift, tucked in the back of the top floor. This sounds like shopping wonderland, but it wasn’t. The malls were hot, all of them, with no air conditioning (that was turned on, at least), everything here was expensive (this was the first plae we’d been where the Pradas were real, with real matching prices), and they all sold the same things. It doesn’t make sense to build another mall right beside the first, and then fill it in with the same stores and products, but they’ve done it. Five times. The only major difference from one mall to another is how modern it looks. By the time the last mall spit me out into the Shanghai sunshine, I was sweaty, tired, kind of dizzy from the countless escalator rides, and empty handed. There really was nothing here in my price range, and what was were household appliances. I just couldn’t imagine coming home and being all like “here, Babe, I got you a rice cooker. I know it looks exactly like the one you got at Wal-Mart, but it’s special because I got it in China”. I had battled and failed, and at this point I was throwing in the towel. He was getting nothing, and I had made peace with that.

Back at the hotel, I cooled off, changed, watched some Asian music videos and made sure all my final packing was done before checking out any joining the group for our ride to the airport. I didn’t want to pack, it meant we were leaving China, and I was having such an amazing time that I could have stayed for longer. But Canada meant I could sleep at normal times again… Right there in the lobby, seconds before we boarded our bus, I went on to aircanada.com and checked our flight status, and it said our flight was going to arrive 15 minutes early back in Vancouver. Great news. Forty five minutes later, as we were all queued up for check in, the guy in front of me mentions that our flight is seriously delayed. Not great news. A collective gasp rippled through our group. We were all overtired, somewhat homesick, and braced for an 11 hour flight across the pacific, so this did not sit well. One agent, missing her kids particularly badly, burst into tears. I was one of the lucky ones ending in Vancouver, but for a lot of the other agents, this meant massive flight rescheduling, overnight stays in Vancouver or red-eye flights across the country. For our patience during the 6-hour delay, Air Canada gave us CDY$70 (CAD$12) food vouchers. We made a bee-line to Burger King (basically, the only option that wasn’t the same meal we’d been eating twice a day for the last week), and went to town. Turns out Burger King in the Shanghai airport is super cheap. Hell, it wasn’t our money, so we were going to spend ever penny of it. Our tables looked like we were feeding a school group as opposed to just 10 people, with everyone adding side salads at at least two bottles of water per person to their orders, knowing they could pack them with them on the plane.

I like the Shanghai airport, I really do. It’s big and nice and clean and has wifi everywhere, but there is not a hell of a lot to keep you interested for 6 hours. I bought a bottle of whiskey for my Finacee at the duty free (real whisky, not that paint thinner stuff I’d had confiscated in Beijing), which actually made him very happy. Go figure, all that worry for nothing. We were going stir crazy, suddenly finding stupid stuff really funny, and pacing around just to keep the blood flowing before being confined to our airplane seats. It was after 11pm by the time our plane finally arrived at the gate, and the second we saw it coming we cheered. We then cheered for the people disembarking (hoping it would get them off faster) and cheered for the crews to load the meals and luggage as fast as possible. Hey, it was something to do. The flight itself was fine, and soon (but not as soon as planned!) we were back in Canada.

The fantastic China trip, AKA “the Amazing Race” was over. I hate this part, the goodbyes, the exchanges of email addresses, the wandering off into the night… but we made some amazing memories and have some incredible pictures. It was such a good trip, with the only complaints really being that it was too freaking cold in Beijing, they gave us too much food, and Air Canada delayed our flight home. In the grand scheme of things, that makes it pretty much a perfect trip. China was full of surprises, breaking all the preconcieved notions I had and just showing us an incredible time. I saw places that I never thought I’d see in person, biked an ancient city wall, seen snake on a stick, appeared in countless Chinese tourists’ photos… it was all good. If you ever considered visiting China, I strongly urge you to do it. You’ll love it!

China day 7: Can I barter for a bootleg copy of Mulan?

holly — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 00:49:54 +0000

“This morning visit the river town of Zhujiajiao” said the itinerary. Turns out it was right. Go figure. After a wonderful morning (at this point, anything not 4am was wonderful) we were on the bus, heading an hour out of Shanghai to a residential townhouse development. Well, that’s what it looked like from the highway turnoff, anyway. But one footbridge and we were in a different place, a village market type atmosphere with tightly packed souvenir stores lining even tighter alleyways, narrow old shop houses with decorative wooden eaves and gnarly trees planted outside. Merchants were sweeping their steps with brooms made out of branches lashed to poles, and rinsing the starch off their rice in the canals that bisected the town. This felt like small town China, and I’m embarrassed to say that I thought more of this trip was going to look like this. It was adorable and comfortable and just made you want to watch Mulan, but at the same time, this was clearly done for the tourist market, to give them a glimpse of how life used to/could be, and sell them some overpriced fridge magnets (which I, of course, bought). That didn’t make it any less charming, though, and on a warm sunny day this was lovely. A place like this just makes you happy, strangers were waving and smiling at us and everyone here just seemed to be in a good mood. We toured the classical Chinese garden, then took a relaxing ten-minute boat ride along the canals, feeling like floating royalty. Exploring the labyrinthine alleys during our free shopping time I found the amazingly named Bum Cafe (judging by the happy colours on the sign, they meant that in the anatomical sense, not the hobo sense), where you could order yourself a hot plate of “piggy steamed.” It was hard, but I passed on that, just taking a picture of the sign instead.

Back to Shanghai for what would be our last giant lazy-susan meal. Can’t say we were going to miss them, they had been good, though awfully repetitive, but this marked the beginning of the end. Our whirlwind taste of China was wrapping up, and we all raised our one free glass of Coke, Sprite, beer or water to toast to that. From there, the silk factory tried to sell us silk comforters and pyjamas by first showing us how they were made. Have to say, this one was a success and there were a few of our group having to pack very, very carefully to get their stuff home. Comforters, even vacuum-packed ones, take up a lot of room in your carry-on.

We came very close then to re-working our itinerary (we were really good at that by now) and adding in an hour-long river cruise past the Bund, but after assessing our financial situation and realizing that we would loose valuable shopping time by doing that, we headed straight on to the next stop, the Yu Yuan Gardens in Old Town. Prior to arrival, when I thought about must-see sites in Shanghai, this was the one spot that came to mind, and after touring it in person, it only cemented that. They are huge and elaborate and classic, with sculptures and amazing limestone formations and hundreds of different types of trees. The only downside is that they’re crowded, so they don’t have that calm tranquility that define most Chinese gardens. Two hundred Japanese school kids paraded past us at one point. There was no quiet time here. But some really great pictures to be taken.

Surrounding the gardens is a shopper’s paradise. An outdoor mall all done up in classical Chinese architecture to blend in with the gardens, you would think you had gone back in time until you look closer and notice there’s Dairy Queens, Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts everywhere you turn. This was a souvenir shopper’s wonderland, and you could barter for everything, even in the nice department stores. We spent almost two hours there, and no one went home empty handed. I’m not even sure if not buying something is physically possible here. Hell, I bought tiny silk baby pyjamas, and I don’t even have kids or know anyone who does. You just get caught up in it all and next thing you know you’ve bargained the price way down and are going in for the kill. The vendors come to you, too, so standing still away from the shops, you’re still not safe. They will find you. Between the time we regrouped and the time we got on the bus (max 5 minutes), half our group had bought more knockoff Rolexes and fancy pens.

Tonight we had some nice, relaxing free time and no giant Chinese dinner (yay!). Most of our group made a beeline to Pizza Hut, while a few others just wandered around the busy shopping streets that surrounded the hotel, enjoying the lights at night. Shanghai looks like a totally different place at night, with the skyscrapers lighting up, multicoloured or covered in LED twinkle effects, it’s like a permanent Christmas party. This one intersection had 5 mega shopping malls all right adjacent to one another, each brighter and with more dramatic lighting than the next, culminating with one having a thirty foot Plexiglas sphere laden with constantly changing neon. Speaking of Christmas, this was also the first city we’d really seen Christmas decorations in, and they looked more than a little out of place. Giant toy soldiers and a two-storey fruitcake in the middle of the French Concession, glowing bedazzled trees outside a Sephora, and a three-foot diameter festive steamed dumpling. All this juxtaposed against people riding bikes down the sidewalk meticulously laden with a hundred baskets and scaffolding made from bamboo lashed together, rather than the safer-looking (but probably not as strong) steel. Being a major corporate and banking hub, there was much more of a western influence here than I had expected, and seeing anything Christmas just cemented that. This I would have expected in Hong Kong, but not here.

Tomorrow we actually had nothing planned. Well, except for the flying to Canada part, but that wasn’t until late afternoon, so we actually could sleep in, chill out, rest our tired feet and/or explore at our leisure. That seemed such a strange concept at this point. But at the same time, not having more to do was somewhat bittersweet, as that meant it was over. I hate this part of a great trip, prepping for vacation withdrawl. The best way to get over it? More shopping…

China day 6: Shanghaied!

holly — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:35:48 +0000

The really disturbing part is that no one noticed the 4am morning anymore. I think the routine-ness of it, combined with a little jet lag allowed us to settle into a stupidly early morning groove quickly. If anything we were ready early this morning, early enough that we could sit back and enjoy most of our breakfast boxes in the hotel lobby before we even had to board the bus. The flight once again was effortless, and the onboard breakfast far less entertaining now that everyone already knew to avoid the congee. After the icy winds of Beijing and the murky smog of Xian, seeing both sunshine and fifteen degrees upon arrival in Shanghai made us ridiculously happy. Sunglasses! No gloves! A driver who won’t quickly learn “more heat” in English! Sweet.

We had thought we were going to the hotel like usual, but to our surprise the tour started right from the airport talking us directly to the Bund. At the time this seemed horribly inconvenient, as we all had our carry-on bags to leave on the bus, and the constant concern that something was going to happen to our valuables as we left them behind with the driver (nothing happened, they were totally professional and secure, but still, we worry). But this was before we had any concept of how big Shanghai really is. 23 million people in a space quite a bit smaller than Beijing, this is a city of skyscrapers. Everything is tall. More than 4000 skyscrapers dot the skyline, and anywhere you go, no matter what direction you face, it looks like you’re staring at a downtown skyline. It’s like Hong Kong with slightly more space in between the buildings, or Singapore time fifty. To drive anywhere here takes about an hour, all on super clean, neatly organized highways that snake through the city like tangled spaghetti noodles. Compared to what we had seen this far, this hyper-modern metropolis didn’t even feel like China anymore. It felt like a new planet. Picture every major city centre you can think of, then squish them all together and you get Shanghai. No wonder they took us straight to the sightseeing, if we had gone to the hotel, dropped off our stuff and driven back, we would have lost most of the day right there just in transit.

The Bund is amazing. The best first impression of Shanghai ever. We were all in love. A sunbathed waterfront promenade, marked by the massive white sails of the Monument to the People’s Heroes, with the futuristic Pudong towers on one side and the historic 1940’s era European concession buildings on the other. Old meets new and the only way to keep them seperated is to have a wide river in the middle. The Pudong side looks like Las Vegas. Mainly because it doesn’t look real, more like a computer-generated, brightly coloured cluster of surrealistic buildings. The SimCity version of reality. The star of it all is the TV tower, the iconic Shanghai Pearl, with it’s distinctive “pink balls on a stick” architecture, but behind that the massive “bottle opener” tower touches the clouds, and in front of it the convention centre’s glowing globe (literally). It’s one bit of craziness squished up against another, and the overall effect is wild. Makes for amazing photos, too, and while we wandered, at least five wedding couples, in full attire, were getting their formal pictures taken against the perfect backdrop. In sharp contrast, the colonial side is still exaclty as it was back in the day (not kidding our hotel had a portrait taken in 1955 on the wall, and aside from the addition of cars, it looks exactly the same today), with grand stone buildings topped with clock towers and oxidized copper roofs. This classical street would look incredible anywhere, frozen in time, but facing it off against the over-the-top eccentricity of Pudong only makes them more impressive. Seriously, google it.

Then the Shanghai museum. I’m sure this museum has a fantastic collection, unrivaled by anything in China. We saw about 1% of it. Not for lack of trying. Our guide took us there and gave us the twenty minute tour of the bronze section (fascinating, if not kinda similar to what we’d seen – and pretty much paid attention to – in Xian), then gave us free time to explore. But it was sunny and warm outside. Finally. And when you combine tiredness and a cool, dark museum, it’s not a good combination. We stayed inside for just long enough to use the bathroom (naturally) and then all congregated outside on the steps, stretched out in the sunshine. It was the pick me up the group needed despite being a horrible waste of a good museum.

The French Concession was next, old stone buildings and alleyways overflowing with trendy boutiques and pricey sidewalk cafes. We could have been in Cannes. The other agents went crazy, loving this place and it’s perfect European vibe. And 90% of the patrons at the cafes were westerners, too, so that seemed to be the overwhelming consesus. This was where the fatigue started to get to me, as I got really irritated that everyone was so excited to be in a district that was so un-Chinese. This is just a personal pet peeve of mine, but when I’m in Asia, I want to see Asia and all it’s colours and history and architecture. I love it over here, this is my comfort zone, and I keep coming back for more. So it drove me nuts when the others were thrilled to not feel like they were in China anymore. But then again, Europe might be their comfort zone, so they were equally as happy to find something soothing and familiar for them as I had been for the rest of the trip. It had to be the lack of sleep that caused me to internally overreact and have to bit my tongue the whole time we wandered the cobblestone alleys. I was glad from the French Concession we on went to the Jade Buddha Temple, because the peace and tranquility of a Buddhist temple never fails to calm me down and put things back in perspective.

Finally late afternoon we at last rolled into the Ramada Plaza Gateway hotel. By this time we were running on fumes and seriously needed some downtime to recharge. Really nice hotel, big (but probably classified as mid-sized in this city), with good sized rooms. Tiny bathrooms, though. This was the first place we’d been without bathtubs. After a short rest, during which I ran out and finally bought stamps for those postcards I’d been carrying around since Beijing, but just hadn’t had time to actually write or mail, we all regrouped for dinner. Apparently in my haste to get in touch with the people back home, I had missed the memo to dress up for dinner. Everyone came down looking really nice, a bit more formal with some more makeup than usual, and there I was in a hoodie and tank top. I felt like such a knob, but there was no time to change. At least it was my best hoodie!

One more identical dinner and then to the Shanghai Acrobatic show. I seriously cannot recommend this show more. If you’re going to Shanghai, go. Don’t ask, just go. It’s not that expensive, and is and hour and a half of pure entertainment. The things that these talented performers can do, like spinning a hundred-pound ceramic planter on their head, while balancing on a rolling beam, or soaring high above the crowd with no safety net, holding on one-handed to just a simple swatch of fabric and supporting another person by only their foot – we could not be sleepy during this show. “There’s no way they can do tha- oh my God, they did!” The finale was eight motorbikes riding formations inside a twenty foot sphere. We were seriously sitting there waiting for the scream the crash and the arrival of the paramedics. I’ll let you guess how that turned out. Needless to say, we were far more awake after this show than we were the cultural dance in Xian, and I actually managed to change into both halves of my pyjamas before falling asleep this time!

China day 5: Here come the Big Potatoes

holly — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:58 +0000

Today was the second day this trip that crossed off one of my bucket list sights to see. I woke up Christmas-morning early, and then spent hours drinking my body weight in tea at the breakfast buffet as I killed time. I just wanted to get going! There was so much to see! I wasn’t the only one, though. Two of the other agents awoke at 4am, convinced we had another super early morning and in a total panic because they thought they had missed the wake up call and were going to be left behind. Luckily they called and woke up the tour leader (well, not luckily for the tour leader) before rushing downstairs. That would have been incredibly funny in hindsight…

An en route souvenir stop at a terracotta factory selling scale models to tourists (4 out of 10 on the nice bathroom scale), and then we were at the Terra Cotta Warriors museum. The excitement was palpable. Because, as the guide said, we were “Big Potatoes”, our tour van pulled right up to the entrance gates and let us out, a much shorter walk in than the normal one from the parking lot. Sweet. From the outside it looked nice, a cluster of modern airplane-hangar like buildings with a very clean, busy courtyard connecting them, but it was once you stepped through the doors of Pit 1 that it all becomes real. The vast expanse of space stretching football-field length out in front of you, with the dug-out rows of marching Terracotta soldiers and horses lined up in greeting. Damn, I’m really here. I kept reminding myself to put the camera down every once in a while and just drink it all in with my eyes, as there was so much to see and so many amazing photos to take. In person, they are even cooler than they look in the media. Individually, their details are striking, but seeing them all lined up together really is what makes this so special. In spots there are ladders and tables erected as workspace for the archaeologists who are still actively recovering more and more pieces and rebuilding more of the shattered warriors, and opened, unfinished pits show the piles of rubble (feet and hands and scattered bits of torso) that they have yet to work through. I can only imagine what this place is going to look like in ten years, when hundreds more of the warriors will be standing sentry and all the buildings would have to be extended to house them all. And keep in mind, they still haven’t unearthed the Emperor himself, the man of honour whom all these figures are guarding for eternity. He’s still somewhere beneath the giant pyramid of grass (it sounds silly, but it really is a huge, pointy grass hill), located a mile behind the warriors museum. This is a living, breathing wonder of the world, changing on a daily basis. Oh well, I guess I’m just going to have to come back…

After the short movie showing the history behind the statues, we explored the gift shop (did you have any doubts?) and picked up copies of the souvenir guidebook. What was really cool was that the 85 year old farmer who had discovered the warriors while trying to dig a well back in the 80’s (he’s one of 5 men who found them, and one of only 2 surviving) was there in person, signing autographs and posing for pictures. Hell, he didn’t make much from his monumental discovery (go communism, the land belongs to the government, so they just take it back for free), so earning a living this way is dramatically better than going back to pig farming. He signed and dated my book, and having that date in there, commemorating this forever, is awesome.

Another giant lunch (really good) and then Pits 2 and 3. They have a dramatically different feeling from Pit 1, more polished museum style, as opposed to active archaeological dig, but really well laid out and informative. Many more pictures to be taken and souvenirs to be bought. It’s funny, in Beijing most of the tourists had been Chinese, but here, about half of them were the standard North American/European tourists, all clad in their fast-dry “travel” cargo pants and millions of pockets vests, giant cameras around their necks and two bored looking kids in tow, heads down in their smartphones, oblivious to the amazing sights beside them. There is definately a more adventure/backpacker vibe, and because of it the whole city had more of a tourist atmosphere. You could tell that these warriors really are the only reason most people come to Xian, that it’s more of a once in a lifetime pilgrimage than a place to come and stay for a while. I could have spent more time at the museum, staring down each figure in detail, but with the crowds (once again, this was super low season) you really had to keep moving to allow everyone a chance to witness the spectacle.

Technically, the rest of the day was scheduled as “leisure time”, but we were on such a tight timeline and everyone had such big dreams of what to see and do, we actually just divided up into two groups for yet another adventure. Half of us went with our guide to get a foot and neck massage, while the other half (me included) went to the Xian city wall for a little bike ride. This was no Great Wall, it was actually more sturdy looking, wide and fat, gray stone with big decorative towers and guardhouses spaced intermittently along it’s top. We rented our bikes from the south gate (CAD$3.50 with a CAD$8.50 damage deposit – technically we could have taken these bikes home with us for only CAD$12) and were off. Sort of. The bikes were circa-1950, so it took us a few tries to find ones where the chain didn’t fall off every time you tried to pull the pedal, or where the pedals themselves were rusted still. Eventually, one girl actually just took one with no brakes at all because it was the only one close to her size, and she just carefully coasted to a stop when needed. Needless to say, no one took the bikes home. This was so much fun. It’s so peaceful up on the wall, you’re still surrounded by the heart of Xian, but you feel removed from it, safe up in your perch in the clouds. You can look down and see the hustle below you, then keep pedaling on in comfortable (relative, this is China) silence. And it felt so good to get some exercise and (un)fresh air. The stone pavers were really uneven, being built 641 years ago and all, so we were swerving around like we were drunk, trying to avoid the potholes. Mainly because we thought that if we hit one the bikes would just start falling apart beneath us. Tourists and locals waved and laughed at us as we rode past, gladly moving out of the way of the crazy Canadians.

We returned the bikes (they did give us one of those surprised “you brought them back?” looks, leading me to believe they go though a lot of bikes. So, if you’re ever in need of a rusted and barely functional piece of crap for your biking pleasure, Xian is the place to go!) then kept our legs moving by walking from there to the Drum tower, which is conveniently also one end of the Muslim Market. En route we stopped in at a McDonalds for some drinks and fries, as there is very little more comforting than McDonalds’ fries when traveling internationally, and to use the bathroom. McDonalds always have good bathrooms. The market shopping was good tonight, we found a quieter side street that was just as filled with stalls, but had a third of the crowds. We brought home a pretty sweet haul, let me tell you. Talking a taxi back from the hotel was an adventure, too. We found a minivan taxi that didn’t have any real seats in the back, so we just sat on wooden planks slightly raised off the floor, and hopped in hoping the driver knew where we were going. I had shown him the address written in Chinese and the little tiny map on the back of the hotel’s business card, both of which he had nodded “yeah yeah” to, but taxi drivers are notorious for nodding like that and then driving around in circles for weeks, trying to figure out where to go. I like to call this a “cultural experience”, which involves a lot of blind faith, but in our case it worked out, and for a ridiculously cheap fare, too

So back to the hotel for one last night in my giant room, filled with a lot of “oh my god, how am I going to fit all this crap in my suitcase?” packing. Yep, you guessed it, 4am wake up call tomorrow!