Xi'an

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We woke up bright and early and went down stairs for breakfast in the adjoining restaurant, we got one free meal with our stay. The breakfast was really bad and we had to pay for one of our meals which was way over priced. It would have been better to find another place to eat. The hotel hired a driver for us to get to the terracotta warriers. I think it took about 45 minutes to get there from downtown. It was a long walk from the ticket window to the actual site. We opted to take the shuttle, an open tram like car train, and waited in line for about a half an hour. Once at the site there were three buildings to tour. We started with #1 which is the big one with the most soldiers. It was a sea of Chinese tourists and us. We were a good 4 inches taller than most people in the building and this caused the people selling little nicknacks to swim through the crowd towards us. This building was closterphobic. They let way to many people in to the building so it was liking being at the front of a concert being pushed and shoved. Dave and I pushed our way through to an exit and went to the next building. This building was much better, not because the statues were better but because there wasn't a crowd. I think a lot of the tourist groups only go to the first building and then on to the shopping on the way out. In this building, I'm not sure which it was, we could see the statues closer up and we didn't get pushed or shoved. We toured around the whole pit in this building. We went to the third building but weren't really impressed with it. Everyone has to walk back to the ticket entrance as the tram was only a one way deal. They make you do this because they want you to buy stuff from the shops that were lining the path back to the parking lot. We shopped a little and then went and found our driver.

We got back to the hotel about noon and asked the hotel how to catch the shuttle to the airport which I had read about online. They told us they could book us a cab but after a little pushing they told us where to get the bus. The bus was something like $3.50 a person a cab was like $40. We walked over to where the bussed departed to make sure we knew where they were. We ate at the restaurant the busses were parked in front of. Some little kids kept coming over and saying hello to us. Even the people who don't speak English in China at least know hello so we had people saying it to us a lot usually followed by a giggle or in the case of the kids, running away. Our flight didn't leave until 7 PM so we spent the rest of the day touring around Xi'an. We went to the bell tower and then to the city wall. We rented bikes and rode around the entire wall. It was bigger than it looked. This was one of our favorite activities that we had done so far. I was also stopped by some teenagers making a video for school on the wall. They interviewed me about why I came to Xi'an. We finished up at the wall and walked back to the hotel to get our luggage and then on to the shuttle to the airport. We flew to Guilin arriving around 10 PM.

I had hired a car to pick us up from the airport since we were getting in so late and were going directly to Yangshuo. It was great to see my name on a sign after a long day and just get in a car with no pushing or shoving to wait for a taxi. The ride was a little over an hour and pitch dark and at times the fog was so thick on the road I wasn't sure how the driver was staying on the winding road. It was raining pretty hard when we got to Yangshuo but we made it to our hotel. This is a tourist town and being Saturday we were able to get some food after checking into our hotel the Rosewood Inn. The main street and many of the little streets around the town were all either hotels, hostels, vendors or restaurants. We went to bed exhausted again on a bed that was similar in comfort to a futon but better then the last hotel.

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