Day 6-8, Xi'an

We arrived in Xi'an at 7 o'clock on monday morning having just spent 14 hours on a 'hard-sleeper' train from Beijing. And 'hard-sleeper' it was!! Each carriage was divided into about 15 compartments, with each compartment containing 6 beds (the lowest bed on the floor and the highest in the roof!). The compartments were all open (no doors!) and shared 2 toilets, but as there was 16 of us it was really good fun and we had brought plenty of beer to keep us occupied! Having had only a couple of hours sleep (the carriages are quite noisy) we arrived in Xi'an where we were met by as mini-bus and taken straight to our hotel for showers and breakfast! The hotel was once again really posh and even had a dress code (which we completely disregarded!)! After a bite to eat we were off on a tour of the city with our guide before finding a laundrette to wash our clothes! Xi'an is the 4th oldest city in the world (2000 years old), behind Athens, Rome and Istanbul, and even though its one of the smallest cities in China (it has no metro and you can walk everywhere) its population is still over 7 million!. It still has its original city wall (18km long) and so we all headed there first to walk around it. However, when we arrived we found that you could also hire tandem bikes to cycle around it and so opted for this instead! Once we had worked out how to keep our balance (and debs had learnt to trust me: i was driving!!) it was an interesting and unique way to see the city. However, about halfway round the wall the back tire of our bike burst, but being as stubborn as always i was determined to cycle all the way around without stopping and so continued to cycle even though it was like dragging a third person! Debs wasn't too pleased though, as without a back tire she felt every single pothole (and there were a lot of them!), whereas i was pretty comfortable up at the front! Having returned the bikes we decided to visit the Muslim Quarter in the afternoon. This was an incredible experience! There were market stalls everywhere in the street selling everything from souveniers to food and being pretty much the only westerners we were treated like celebrities! Eventually we found our way through the markets to the Great Mosque. This is a really old mosque (debs will fill you in on all the history and stuff) which is still in daily use but also open to tourists. After finding our way out of the maze of streets that made up the Muslim Quarter we went in search of the rest of the group before heading off (with great trepidation!) to the Great Wild Goose Pagado for the 'light and water show'. However we were pleasantly surprised! The area in front of the Pagoda was covered in restaurants and bars and in the middle was a huge 'courtyard' area, where at night, thousands of lights and water fountains (many of them 20 metres or more in height) all 'dance' in time to music in a show similar to the fountains at Cesar's Palace in Las Vegas. With the Pagoda in the background it was a really mesmerising show and after grabbing some food we were exhausted and so made a beeline for bed!

Our second day in Xi'an began with a trip to the much fabled Terra-cotta Warriors. These were discovered in 1974 by a farmer (who we later met!) digging in his field and are now touted as the '8th wonder of the world' and one of the greatest archaological discoveries of the last century. The warriors discovered were part of a tomb belonging to one of the great emperors of China and when he died he had 6000 life-size terra-cotta statues made of each of his soldiers (perfect individual likeness) to guard him in death. He also had terra-cotta statues made of all his generals, and horses and carriages. However, shortly after his death a civil war began and the tombs containing the statues were attacked and a lot of the warriors broken. Following their discovery, scientists began putting them back together and the sight of all these repaired statues is now actually quite frightening! To this day the emperors tomb remains sealed as scientists are afraid that opening it would destroy everything inside (by oxidation) but you can still walk around the mound where he's buried. The remaining time in the afternoon was spent visiting an internet cafe and eating more chinese food!!

Our final day in Xi'an began with an early start as we had to catch another sleeper train at 6.30pm and had a lot to cram in first! Having seen the Great Wild Goose Pagoda the night before we first went to see the Small Goose Pagoda (the taller of the two!). However, having been stung out of 50 yuan for an entry fee there wasn't much to see, other than a mind-numbingly boring museum! Before leaving though i was determined to climb the pagoda but the girls, with their legs still sore from the Great Wall, opted to wait at the bottom. Having made it to the top in 5 minutes (14 stories: not bad!) i raced back down only to tear a muscle in my leg, slowing our progress for the rest of the day! From the Pagoda it was over to the Drum and Bell Towers in the centre of the city. These are the old towers once used to beat out the time on bells and drums (before we had watches) and we were even able to see performances in both towers. Then it was back to the Muslim Quarter for 'secret-santa' shopping before heading back to the hotel (via the internet cafe again!) to catch the bus to the station for our next overnight train (17 hours!) to Shanghai.