Ash and Nath arrived in Xi'an exhausted after a crazy long sleeper train lasting 26 hours, I on the other hand had managed to sleep at least 20 of those hours and was pretty well rested!
We found our hostel Han Tang Inn down a little alleyway and instantly wanted to stay there longer than 1 night; friendly staff, great atmosphere and amazingly clean bathroom and dorm ! Ashamed to say that we ate McDonald's on arriving as nothing else was open past midnight! It was soo good!
Next morning we enjoyed a hearty breakfast before making our way to The Terracotta Warriors. The sun was out again and we had decided to use the public buses, only problem with this was the number of Chinese tourists who thought like-wise!! After a lengthy queue we were finally aboard a bus and on our way. We arrived and quickly bought our ticket before entering the first - and apparently most impressive of the three pits. WOW - it was incredible, the sheer number of soldiers all set out in formation was incredible -a real sight, we visited the second and third pits which were amazing but not quite on a par with the first.
The Terracotta soldier pits were never mentioned in historical records until pit one was discovered in 1974 by local Chinese farmers while drilling a well. Then archaeologists began the excavations of the Terracotta Army. After a great day here we were shattered and headed for our next train to Beijing, feeling like we are constantly on the move at the moment! (Thankfully we are catching the bullet train this time), covering the same distance that we had done the previous day (in 26 hours) the bullet will get us to Beijing in 5! Mad.