As you might have noticed, my blog was pretty sparse while I was gone seeing the sights when I promised that would update more. Well, right now I am sitting in the Shanghai Pudong International Airport waiting for ticket counter to open. Jordan is showing this guy from Dubai how to do some magic tricks so with time to burn, I figured that I’d do an update with the adventures that we had in Xi’an. Pics will come in another post.
We were in Xi’an from Tuesday night until Friday night and we had a lot of fun. While we were in the hostel, there was a girl from Brazil (Joana) and a guy from Mauritius (Gary) that we sharing the room with. They were there together as friends and he had a lot of fun with them, especially because they spoke English. All the sights that we went to in Xi’an were with them so you will see their names mentioned in this post.
Day 1:
Army of Terracotta Warriors
This place was awesome! This place was the ancient burial site of the first emperor to unify China. To protect his burial site, he had thousands of terracotta soldiers made to protect him. This place was massive and they are still not finished digging all of them out. When we showed up at the place (which was about an hour out of town by bus) we were stopped by a lady who was offering us an English language tour for 40 RMB each and we said yes.
Having the tour guide there was a lot of help because we learned a lot that we normally would have because we don’t speak Chinese. Also, she took us to this really expensive jade shop that was INSIDE the jade shop. I don’t really understand jade and what makes it more expensive but there were pure jade statues only 10 inches high that were price at about 1 million US dollars. At a restaurant there we also had the infamous long noodle which is a wide 12 foot long noodle that that you dipped in this tomato type soup. That was good too.
Xi’an City Wall
The city of Xi’an used to be one of the ancient capitals of China so there are a lot of historically significant buildings around town and the city wall is one of them. They also say that they are the best preserved city walls in China and I have no reason to doubt them. The city wall measures 14 km in circumference and 12 meters in height and was a spectacle to behold.
The best part of it was that you could rent bicycles for super cheap and ride that whole length of the wall. Joana suggested that we do it that evening time. I was sure glad that we did because we ended up seeing some spectacular sunsets while on the wall. We then ended the hour and forty minute ride at night with the wall and the city lit up in different colors and even with ambiance music.
I would have to say the riding the city wall was probably one of my most memorable moments. My bicycle seat was broken so I am sure of that was a contributing memorable factor but it was just the uniqueness of it all.
Sure, the Great Wall of China was pretty spectacular but not that many can say that they biked an ancient city call. Also, my favorite thing was admiring the architecture of the building on the wall. It was simply amazing.