Good-bye, Blue Sky!

We were suppose to have arrived in Xining from Zhang Ye at 1am, a seven hour trip.  In reality, we didn't get into Zhang Ye until 4:30am.  Definately not a seven hour trip.  The reason for such a large discrepancy in time was because (my theory) that the bus drivers, in hopes of early some extra $$, took on extra passengers, thus surpassing the maximum passenger limit, and took a longer route to get to Xining, in hopes of avoiding the authorities.  In the end, their plan didn't work as well as planned since we passed through a check point anyway and, surprise, the officials saw that we clearly violated the maximum.  I think the drivers bribed the officials because we only stopped for about 15 minutes before continuing on our way.

 

When we finally arrived back in Xining, we were all exhausted, and lugged ourselves and our backpacks to Xining's Post Hotel (definitely not going to stay at last time's shit hole of a hotel).  After finally checking in, all three of us promptly collapsed on our bed and did not wake up until 1pm the next afternoon.  The sleep was lovely.  :)

 

We woke up to a beautiful afternoon - clear blue sky, warm sunshine, and for once in quite a while, a mild temperature day!  Since we woke up so late, we didn't quite have the time to do anything else besides grabbing a lunch/dinner before heading out to the airport (which, quite frankly, was just fine with me :-) ).

 

Our pick for a meal this time was again, the amazing hot pot restaurant we went to last time.  This time, since there were only three of us, it meant more food for us!!  Needless to say, the fight over potatoes and mushrooms was a lot less vicious.

 

Post lunch/dinner, we caught the airport shuttle that took us to the Xining Airport.  Xining's airport location reminded me of Lhasa's airport.  Set in a valley surrounded by rolling green mountains, the scene was beautiful and a perfect way to commemorate the wonderful trip we had in Qinghai and Gansu as we left on a jet plane back to our world, Beijing.