Day Five: Mooch around the city.

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Hi All,

So last day in the city we decided to have a look at some of the sights recommended in the guide. We went to what was a Confucius temple to see the Forest of Stelae Museum. Stelae are the stone tablets like tombstones you find in the temples here. They are good examples of caligraphy. I don't know about you but I struggle with a paper and pen I can't even begin to imagine how hard it must be to carve chines characters on to stone tablets. There were complete books of Confucius teachings carved onto stone tablets. Really good and interesting and as ever peaceful. It's really like stepping out of the madness when you go into these Chinese temples, the gardens are always so well kept and clean.
From there we took the bus, we did rather well with the buses. They are always difficult as everything is written in Chinese, but we managed to read our map well.
We then went on to the muslim quarter for lunch. After a quick bite we went on to a lovingly restored courtyard house of Gao Yuesong who was a bureaucrat in the Qing dynasty. Thanks to the lovely man who guided us around. We saw inside the art gallery and we also had tea... All Feng shui and Ying and Yang.
We then walked around the muslim quarter and tried a few street snack and did a little shopping and we also stumbled upon another rather run down mosque down one of the side streets.
In the evening we went to a restaurant called Kingtown No.1 and we had some cantonese food.
We had a fantastic time in Xi'an. Big thank you to Sharon Dragon for showing us part of your beautiful city.

Jah Bless you all

David and Dany

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