May 6, 2009:
Our last day in Xi’ An we woke up early to ride bicycles on the city wall which is a square around the old city. There are multiple entrances to get on the wall, but we are uncertain if they are all open. To be certain and for the grand view, we recommend that you enter from the south gate. We took bus 215 from the Drum Tower and 3 stops later we were in front of the south gate. The entrance fee was 40 Yuan per/person and did not include the bikes. Once you enter the main gate you will have to climb a flight of stairs to get to the top of the wall. There are several places where you can rent bicycles, but the nearest is about 75 meters to the right of the south gate. You can rent either tandem or individual bikes. The south wall is the bumpiest part, so don’t be discouraged, because it gets better!
On each corner there is a tower and along the walls there are either towers or places where towers once stood. The wall itself is very impressive as this is the only original and fully intact wall in all of China. It is similar to the Great wall in material and design, but completely different in that it is in the middle of a busy and growing metropolis, where as, the Great Wall is in nature where it conquers mountains!
The ride around the wall took about 75 minutes, but could easily take longer if you stopped at all of the towers and other structures along the wall.
Of course you can walk the whole wall, but that would probably take several hours , or you can hire a bike carriage and we even saw electric golf cart type vehicles!
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