Xian

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Hi all.
We are currently sitting cosy in our Xi'an hostel common area, ordered dinner... and sipping hot chocolate. Its FREEZING outside, hat and gloves as you step out the door. Although not snowing here like it was in Nanjing, it is colder temperature so hopefully no rain is forecast.

Today we were wanting to go on the hostel's terracotta warriors tour, but the logistics of numbers were against us and we didn't have enough people, hopefully tomorrow. So instead we went on a tour of the tomb of Jing Di (second? emperor of the Han Dynasty) and his Empress Wang. They have been busy excavating and creating a cool modern museum so you can walk over glass floors with the 'pits' beneath showing all the clay figurines, clay animals, timber and clay horse and carts, remnants of actual animals, and a huge assortment of other offerings-clay models of all kinds of everyday things, alot of clay pots+bowls etc. It was really interesting, all the mini clay animals lined up on mass in perfect rows, and all the small figurines also once lined up but now often falling over eachother- and all armless as the wooden arms have long since rotted away.
See the pics.

Oh but before that we went on a bank quest. We got to the bank (bank of china), it wouldn't accept my card :-( so I was out of luck, then when Pete tried to exchange his NZ dollars they looked at them like we were from another planet. Haha. So we ended up getting a small amount from a different money machine and will try to find an ICBC in the next couple of days- they seem to be more foreigner friendly.

This evening we went back to the Muslim Quarter, had some street snacks- its a shame NZ doesn't really do street snacks, they are BRILLIANT! I took some photos this time of some of the stalls for you.

over and out
xx hannah+pete

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