Terracotta Smog

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We arrived early in the morning after a relaxing 24hr journey from Dunchuang in soft sleeper. Xi'an greeted us with a big dirty cough, the air being filled with smog and pollution.
After checking into our hostel and being treated to a chinese 'english breakfast' we spent the rest of the day looking around the city although the views were less than spectacular for aformentioned reasons... We found ourselves in the muslim quarter, our noses led to the smells of kebabs and chinese curry and here Lucy was on her best bartering form, with every imaginable piece of tourist tat on sale.

That evening we relaxed in our hostel bar, with our new found friend Francois a retired French-Canadian economist (who'd we'd met on the train)and a few Hans and Tsing Tao, preparing ourselves to meet the Warriors the next day..

After much deliberation, we booked ourselves on the hostel day tour to take in a few of the local sights. The first few stops, including the "see how the warriors were made" (aka buy expensive repo warriors)we're not what we quite expected... Finally arriving at the Warriors, we were not disappointed. Pit 1, the big one. We were greeted with an army, a spectacular sight. Spanning the size of the City Ground(ok probably undersold now), we were in awe of the shear expanse of the army coupled with the minute detail of the different faces, still not all uncovered! Pits 2 and 3, showing off the General's Army and various other relics made us linger to appreciate the incredible history behind this site (although Tom had a few 'gentle' words with our tour guide to allow us to see it at our own pace, rather than 100m sprint pace!) Hours could be spent here and never would be long enough, certainly worth a trip to Xi'an!

The next day, our planned cycle tour of Xi'an was cancelled due to the rain, so we did some further shopping and made time for some afternoon tea at the folk museum. We got a little carried away in the markets and left with little time, and no taxis, we found ourselves cutting through traffic, riding the pavements in a home made rickshaw to make our train on time.
Phew...

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