We arrived at Xi'an in the rain at around 09:30 and we met by the mini bus from the hostel and were taken back to drop our bags off and have some breakfast. The breakfast was not as nice as the previous hostel but they did manage to serve it to us within a few minutes and all together unlike the previous hostel that would take over 30 mins sometimes. Showers then followed and a quick change of clothes.

The plan was to walk around the city with Roy so that we could all get a glimpse of what was around and get our bearing a bit. As a group we decided it would be best to go to the terracotta warriors, which was inside, and then do something tomorrow which was outside as the weather was set to improve.

We priced up our options of getting a public bus or a couple of taxis and then after noticing that the hostel could hire us a mini bus we got a quote and decided on renting the private mini bus to take us there as it worked out the cheapest option. The bus wasn’t going to be here for an hour so Roy took us for a short walk around town to point out some local sights.

When we arrived at the Terracotta Warriors, bought our tickets and then as the Rough Guide had warned us we had to walk through about 1km of restaurants and gift shops before we could get to the entrance gate to the warriors. We also followed the advice of the Rough Guide by visiting the 3 halls in reverse order and I am glad that we had. The first hall (hall 3) contained a handful of warriors, the second hall (hall 2) contained a huge pit with none in and the final hall (hall 1) contained the majority of the warriors and although I was expecting to see thousands of them, there were a few hundred in here. It is said that there are over 7 thousand warriors, but many of them have not yet been uncovered.

On walking around hall 1, I was approached to buy a set of 5 model warriors, starting at 200 Yuan (£20) I quickly refused them as I didn’t really have the room in my bag to carry them around with me for the next few months. After bartering him down to20 Yuan (£2), I really felt that I should buy them, so I am now in possession of 5 model warriors and my bag is getting heavier by the day. I think I will have to ship some stuff back home at some stage (sorry Mum!).

Back at the hostel we met up with Roy who took us all out to a dumpling restaurant where we ate a selection of steamed, boiled and fried dumplings with different meat and vegetable fillings, although they were all mainly filled with pork.