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Hi All
We are now in Xi'an, about 1200km west of Shanghai, we spent the last day in Shanghai, loitering about in cafes and parks passing the time as we were catching an overnight trainn that didnt leave until 8pm. :-) The train took 14 hours and we had a cabin with 4 bunk beds. There was us two and a chinese man and woman. The man slept like darth vader all night and so we didnt have the best nights sleep, but it was ok. We got picked up from the train station by the hostel, it was really busy and we thought we were getting a minibus or a car to the hostel, but ended up catching the worlds creakiest bus, which was jam packed with locals who like to stare at us! :-) We arrived at the Hostel ok though, its lovely, very traditional chinese style architechture with lanterns hung everywhere.
After a quick shower and change of clothes we set about exploring a bit, we went to the Bell Tower and the Drum Towers. These are right in the centre of the city, a calm in the madness of the city. There was a show on in the drum tower- musicians playing all types of drums, it was really good. After that we wandered back to the hostel and had a nap. We tried to go out in the evening but it was raining quite a bit and most places were closed so we ended up just walking round the block and got some food back in the hostel.
Today we went on a tour we organised through the hostel, the organisation was terrible but after several stops for shopping, and for other people to go to a museum whilst we waited on the bus, we got to the terracotta warriors. They are spectacular life-sized clay soldiers and arms buryed to protect the emperors burial site. They are located in a huge aircraft hangar style building of which there are three! The scale is immense and I'm sure once we get the pics up they will do it no justice. They have only found about 2000 of the warriors, horses and chariots of the 8000 they believe there to be, even though they have been excavating the site for about 30 years! We met a couple of girls who are backpacking here as well so went for dinner with them. It proved to be, interesting is perhaps the best way of putting it... We did manage to find stuff that was edible in amongst the live eels and other 'non specific' meats and raw fish!
We have decided that we are going to stay here a couple more days and go straight to Guilin, missing out Chengdu. Think we will miss to much here if we don't so we will be in Xi'an until Monday.
Thats all for now folks.
Love Pete and Hol
xXx
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