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Published: July 14th 2018
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July 11th - Xi'an - Dia 11
How nice is it to sleep in a bed jejeje Today we rested and walked all day through the city of Xi'an. Found the city to be the greenest in comparison to the massive cities of Beijing and Shanghai. Definitely my favorite city so far since the cars actually stop for you while crossing the roads?. Definitely miss that from Canada.
Xi'an, a city with the most beautiful girls I have seen all over China! They are everywhere and they really know how to dress with style. ?
We walked a lot and tried the new local dishes from the area. More noodles but different in style and taste. Definitely helped from not getting bored of them jaja.
The speciality food around the area was lamb. Being that the case since most of the communities living in the city consisted of Muslims. They had two classical dishes with it. The first one being my favorite, slow pressure cooked lamb meat which was chopped thinly and served in a bun. Makes my mouth water by just thinking of it. Really similar to my favorite dish my mom makes...cattle tongue. The second dish being lamb skewers, which were marinated with many spices including paprika and cooked in the grill.
Something interesting we also noticed from walking around the city were the starbucks coffee shops. Every starbucks shop had an amazing architectural design which made it stand out from its surrondings. The inside was equally amazing and noticing that the people buying the coffee were dressed well. After talking about it with Leonardo and Bean we agreed that since coffee is not a popular drink in China, starbucks decided to portray themselves in China as the luxury from the western world. To do that they had to make the shops extremely fancy, and through all of this they managed to inflate the prices a lot! A single medium cup of dark coffee for around 4 canadian dollars! Really love coffee but breaks my heart to see prices that high ?
July 12 Xi'an- Dia 22
Second rest day before heading out. The plan was to visit the Museum of History for the Qin Dynasty. The Dynasty in which the Terracotta Clay Warriors were built to protect the emperors grave. It was a massive failure as we waited through the longest museum line I have ever been in, to be told that the morning tickets had been sold out. Next batch of tickets was in another hour and a half. No way where we going to stay! It did left me wondering just how good the Museum was, due to the never ending line in the middle of the week!
It's amazing how the tourism in China is visited mostly by Chinese, we see little foreign people around. The Chinese government has managed a perfect independent tourist system where they don't need foreigners to get money!
After not being able to get in the Museum we just lazily did little. Just walked around the city and enjoyed watching people live their ordinary lifes.
In the afternoon we did go on a hunt to find a park where we could exercise the upper body . We have been working out a lot during this trip, helps even out the muscles since we are walking a lot ?
After a lot of walking and complaining by Leonardo and Bean regarding my ability to find a park, we finally arrived. Not knowing what to expect and hoping there was at least one pull up bar.
Oh were we surprised!! A whole outdoor gym with so many kids, parents, grandpa's and grandma's goofing around and actually exercising! We did our own little workout in the bars, grabbing a lot of initial attention but after a while blending in with the community, which was nice. The most impressive thing was seeing an 85 year old man hanging in the bars with two fingers and moving around them like a monkey! I wanna be like that when I get to be that age 😊 he looked really happy.
The most impressive thing was seeing him take a break by smoking a cigarette jajaja.
I have never mentioned how much Chinese people smoke. It's something I never expected to see in China. But the majority of the population smokes. And they do it inside slow trains and sometimes even buildings. Definitely makes you feel fortunate that in north america it's pretty much prohibited in all public spaces.
Oh I have also never mentioned the quality of teeth Chinese people have. Bad to keep it simple. The saddest thing I saw a couple of days ago was a kid ,literally 10 years old, who smiled and us being able to see how his teeth were starting to get the brownish/dark color. Bean told us that sometimes the parents forget to teach their kid to care for their teeth since they will eventually fall out after a certain age! What is that sort of mentality! So many wrong things about that.
OK back to the actual day. We finished our workout completely destroyed and went for dinner afterwards.
Bean asked a random local stranger to recommend us his favorite noodle place. After choosing one of four, we went excited and ready to eat a lot of noodles. The restaurant was simple, only one thing in the menu and it was incredible! By mastering the only thing in their menu, I ate the best noodles in my entire life. I also experienced for the first time the deliciousness of eating raw garlic meanwhile eating the soupy thick noodle soup ?? Good thing I don't have a girlfriend ?
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