2 Days Xi’an-Luoyang Tour by Bullet Train

Tour Overview

Xi’an and Luoyang are two of the four most famous ancient capital cities in China. Taking a bullet train from Xi’an, one will arrive in Luoyang in about 2.5 hours.

Day 1: Xi’an-Luoyang by Bullet Train

AM: At around 7:00, a local driver will pick you up from the hotel. Then you’ll transfer to North Xi’an Railway Station for the bullet train to Luoyang. Upon your arrival in Luoyang, you’ll meet a local guide holding a name board.

The guide will lead you to visit the Longmen Grottoes, which is a treasure house of ancient stone-carving artworks. There are over 100 thousand stone statues along the two banks of the Yi River.

PM: After lunch. you will pay a visit to the Museum of Luoyang Eastern Zhou Royal Horse and Chariot Pits. The Eastern Zhou Dynasty is the last slavery dynasty in Chinese history. The last stop is Luoyang Museum which is a historical museum of China and houses over 1,700 cultural and historical relics in 5 showrooms.

Accommodation: Hotel booked by your own

Day 2: Luoyang-Xi’an by Bullet Train

AM: After breakfast on your own, please meet your driver and guide in the hotel at 9:00 and then drive for about 1 hour 20 minutes to Shaolin Temple, the birthplace of Chinese Zen Buddhism and Shaolin Martial Arts. Here you will see the Kungfu show performed by Shaolin monks.

PM: Finish the sightseeing, you will take the bullet train back to Xi’ an. Your 2 days Xi’ an-Luoyang tour ends here.

Tour Price Per Person

There are a lot of names for people who travel the world—backpackers, tourists, explorers, travelers. Labels (标签) are everywhere but seem especially popular among travelers trying to differentiate (区别) their style of travel. For many travelers, these labels make them feel better over another.

Andrew Zimmern from Bizarre Foods once said, “Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in.” The idea here is that travelers are better at exploring the world than tourists. They dig deep into the culture, drink it up, and get to know a place while a tourist takes pictures and declares to have “done Paris.”

But that’s wrong, we are all tourists.

On the road, backpackers love to talk about how real their travels are and how unreal tourists are. “Look at those tourists over there,” they say. They scoff at others who travel too quickly or to places that they think are not well worth visiting. Nevertheless, they do so while eating hamburgers and drinking beers with other travelers.

The only way to really get to know a place deeply is to live there. If you want to live like a local, find an apartment, get a job, go to work, and do the same things as you did back home.

We are all only passing through a culture, getting a small taste before moving on to the next place. Even if we stay weeks or months, we’re just getting in touch with the surface. As a matter of fact, we are all really just tourists, or explorers, or travelers. Call yourself whatever you want—it’s all the same as we’re all trying to do the same thing—see the world.

So don’t label anyone and don’t let anyone label you. We’re all tourists. We’re all travelers. What we are all doing is more important than what we call ourselves. Let’s just enjoy the fact that we are simply people on the road.

The Getty Villa

You won’t need a passport to travel back in time at the Roman Holidays celebration this summer. Discover the sights ( and smells) of ancient Rome, offer your prayers to Venus, read your future in a sheep’s liver(肝脏), and enjoy live musical and comedy performances by the Troubadour Theater Company.

Date: Saturdays and Sundays

Time: 11:00 a.m.--- 3:00 p.m.

Location: The Getty Villa, 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, California

Admission: Free; an advance, timed entry ticket is required

Smelling the Rome Way

What did ancient Rome smell like? Visitors are invited to use their noses (and imaginations) to discover the good. Bad, and sweaty smells of daily life. Take a smell challenge! Be transported back in time and guess the smells familiar to most Romans, like Roman cooking materials and more.

Prayers to Venus

At this small shrine (圣地) of Venus, visitors may honor the goddess and seek her help for important moments in their lives, as Greeks and Romans did. And they are invited to write a wish to the goddess and post it near her statue.

Troubadour Theater Company

In the fancy outdoor setting of the Getty Villa, visitors will enjoy games and comedic performances, meet the actors, and participate in unique photo opportunities. At 11:15 a.m. and 2:15 p.m. , visitors are invited to the Inner Peristyle for “ Mercury in Uranus”, where the group of the actors will perform a sheep sacrifice to Mercury and examine the sheep’s liver to interpret the will of the god.