This morning we got up early, and headed back to the north train station. We went by metro again, bypassed the whole ticket-buying mess, and found our waiting bay. We hopped on a bullet train, and after about 40 minutes (at 240km/h!) we found our stop, huashan bei. Xian these past two days has been sunny, but covered in haze. As we got further out though, we could *almost* see the sky! We had the intention of taking the bus right to the cable car, but we soon gathered that that was not possible. So we took a quick taxi to the huashan visitors station, where there was a bus terminus that will take you to the lower cable car station. We bought our mountain admission tickets (after a struggle again with the language barrier) and hopped on a mini bus. It took about 20 minutes, and it was a pretty incredible drive. We wove through the massive mountain range with there were many switchbacks along a river. The mountains were sheer, and of a yellow-orange stone with dark foliage hanging onto the cliffs. We paid for the cable car, and waited to take it up. They were six person compartments, and it took you extremely high and vertical up to the north peak. The views were fantastic. We could actually see the blue sky! All the steps and pathways of the mountain were carved out of the stone. There were railings made out of metal links due to the verticalness of the hikes. Attached to the railings were red ribbons and thousands and thousands of gold locks with inscriptions in Chinese. We soon came across a vendor selling similar locks, and we bought one, which he engraved with 'Ali and Janet Scott' and the date. We decided to lock it at the highest point we got to. We hiked up and up through 'ear touching cliff' (yeah, it's actually called that) to 'up the heavenly ladder' (stone steps so steep you have to climb it like a ladder) up the green dragon ridge (a massive amout of steps) and stopped on wuyun peak. It had taken us just over an hour and it had been veery vertical. And it was hot. My 6 tops and 3 layers of pants almost killed me. The views were just amazing though. People on the mountain were so funny too! Lots of 'hello! How old are you?' and the likes. A lot of those sneak attack photos too, the ones where they don't think I'm looking. I just don't understand. I think I'm some sort of freak here!
Anyway we locked our lock and put the key in a safe place. We started the descent, which went much quicker then the ascent. We made our way back to the cable car. It was an expensive day trip with all the different admission and transport tickets required, but we both agreed it was our favorite activity so far, after the great wall of course.
We bussed back from the cable car station to the visitors centre. On the ride, we finally came across 2 other caucasians! One man from Australia, one from Portland. They were really nice and struck up a conversation. When mentioned it was my birthday they broke out in 'happy birthday' and tried to get more people into the song. We taxied back to the train station, bullet trained it back to Xian, and metroed it back to our neighborhood. We headed over to the Muslim quarter in search of dinner. The Muslim quarter is a network of streets with loads of small restaurants, street food, and vendors. We sat at a place for soup, looked around a bit, then headed back for showers. Pretty sick day!