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Published: October 16th 2012
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Xian
We caught a sleeper train from Shanghai to Xian. We were hoping to book all our train tickets that we needed in Shanghai but were told we could only book 3 days in advance so we have not yet booked our Beijing to Hong Kong train as yet so this could cause some worries if they are fully booked. However nothing we can do about it so we booked ourselves on the hard sleeper class. There are 3 classes to the sleeper; deluxe which is your own lockable compartment for two, soft sleeper which is 4 bunk beds in a lockable cabin or hard sleeper which we had booked that are 6 bunk beds in a open room. To be honest the price you pay for deluxe and sometimes the soft sleeper you may as well fly. Our beds were in no way hard they were padded and came with sheets, duvet and pillow. We met a lovely Chinese student who enjoyed practicing her English with us. She explained how we could access Facebook as this is banned in China, taught us some Chinese words and even wrote down our name in Chinese for us. Was really good fun
chatting to her.
Unfortunately we had two small babies in our compartment with another small baby next door so we hardly slept as at least one of the babies started crying every hour –it was torture!!
However Xian was an amazing city. We checked into our hotel and decided to go see the Terracotta Warriors which was an hour way by bus. As we had not slept much on the train we both fell fast asleep on the bus before Terry was awaken by a Chinese man next to him to say that we had arrived.
Terry jumped up grabbed his bag and ran off the bus but as I was still stirring I could see we were not quite there yet so called him back... The other people on the bus were calling me to get off in Chinese but I could tell we were too early to be there so stayed put, yes it was a tourist spot but not the right one!
In the end the conductor who knew where we were going called Terry back onto the bus and all the Chinese people laughed
at Terry, I could not stop laughing at Terry’s annoyance as it was the way he jumped up and ran in a panic – still makes me laugh now thinking about it!!
The Terracotta warriors were really cool. They were only discovered 37 years ago so still relatively new. It was a form of funeral art buried with the emperor in 210-209BC and was meant to protect the emperor in his afterlife and to make sure he had people to rule over. The figures included warriors, chariots and horses. They were only discovered due to a group of farmers digging a water well and came across the remains which prompted archeologists to investigate further.
Most of them were in good condition and the details that had gone into them must of taken months or years to do.
The next day we rented a tandem bike to cycle around the great wall that surrounds the centre of Xian. It was a total of 14km and we had a 100 minute hire. I have never been on a tandem before so that was fun. Terry, of course, had to be up front
as he could not handle being at the back and not being able to steer, we did swop at one point but he kept trying to steer which shook the bike which caused him to put down his feet in panic so we were swaying from left to right I just got fed up and said he could drive in the end.
The views were fantastic and at each corner of the wall were the magnificent gated entrances. There was also traditional Chinese music being softly played in the background that really added to the atmosphere. We had a few tandem races with some other Chinese people on tandems. Terry would get carried away, peddle up behind a couple then really peddle fast to overtake that my legs couldn’t keep up so had to stick them up in the air before the other couples or the other boyfriends would peddle fast to try and overtake again and before I knew it my romantic tandem ride was turning into a race at stupid speeds, however Terry did beat everyone we raced to be fair and we did make the full circle within the 100 minutes haha..
That evening we took a walk down to the Muslim quarter, where the famous clock and bell tower are. We sampled some of the steamed dumplings, a Naan bread stuffed with meat and veg, mini spring rolls, mini half eggs on skewers and chicken meat on skewers, followed off by a McDonalds Cookie McFlurry (McDonalds is everywhere in China, actually it has been everywhere we have been travelling!!)
We only spent one night in Xian and the same day we caught the evening soft sleeper train to Beijing as the hard sleeper we had took previously was all booked up. This time we only had 4 bunks to a room which meant we could sit upright on our top bunks, and each compartment was lockable, however we were also in a room with another baby which we just could not believe our luck. The baby was gorgeous though and only 5 months old she could not stop staring at Terry was so funny, maybe due to his height however we had the best night sleep and the baby did not wake up once. We met a Chinese man in the next compartment
who could speak really good English and wanted to practice so gave us tips on where to go in Beijing and how to get about which was great.
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