Mistakes We Made

• In Xi'an, we should have planned our stay more tightly and visited Hua Shan. As it was, we didn't have much to do the last day we were in town, since we didn't want to go far away and we had seen all the good stuff in the city.
• I would have liked to have visited the other section of the Great Wall near Beijing (Mutianyu) although my wife wasn't interested in going.
• We shouldn't have bought all our film in Canada, and instead should have gotten some in Beijing where it is cheaper and still of good quality.
• We should have gotten directly on the 306/307 bus to the Terracotta Warriors. Instead, we sat for half an hour on a tourist bus that was waiting to for a full bus of passengers to leave (none arrived while we were on the bus), and then took a slow small bus to the Terracotta Warriors instead of the 306/307 which would have been faster. But then, we didn't know this in advance.
• We had intended to take a 1 day trip from Beijing to Datong. The idea was great: Take an overnight train to Datong, spend the day there, then take an overnight train back. The problem is that you can't buy return tickets at the train station: they only sell one-way tickets. And you usually need to buy your tickets at least 2 days in advance. Thus, if we went, we'd be unable to get the return ticket we wanted.

  The solution is to buy your tickets from a travel agent or from a hotel or from some other agent. You'll pay a bit more, but they'll arrange for the purchase of your return ticket, which you pick up at your destination. We didn't figure this out until it was too late, so we didn't go to Datong. Which was just as good for us - we were short on time and too tired to go anyway). We were both greatly relieved once we decided not to go.