we went to Shicha Hai area for dinner, wanted the famous Peking roast duck, but the particular restaurant we wanted was closed so we ate in the Silk Road restaurant.The menu was the craziest I've seen yet, Bull frog, Bamboo worms, Fried eel, pigs trotters, pork intestines, Ducks tongue , chicken gizzards. Not very appetising, Tri went for beef and chilli and spring rolls and I went for pork and duck, and rice. Had a few beers after.

we went to see Tiananmen sq and the Forbidden city. Tiananmen sq is huge, it's hard to imagine the whole place full with a million people, which happened a few times in the past.The Forbidden city was basically a big playground for the emperors, which housed the empress and all the concubines plus staff and officials, revamped a few times in the past couple of hundred years, the quality of the halls, bedrooms and gardens are fairly amazing.When we got out we were...

The hotel 'IBIS' is great, budget hotel 7euro each a night with nice rooms air condition and broadband in the room, what more would you need. Went for a walk around Xian, It's so much nicer than Beijing a friendlier environment full of students with a lot of universities . There seemed to be a lot of ethnic groups begging, most deserving money, one couple were singing the guy had received what looked like horrific burns with both his eye lids melted shut, the wom...

we headed for the zoo as our train wasn't until 21:36pm. Tried the subway system, the fellow giving out the tickets had no English but by pointing to the map we got our message across. Using a map and Joe's trusty compass we hopped on, it was a loop train with a few transfers on it, only for going the long way round the loop we did fine. At the Transfer station one train before us was packed, the door wouldn't close so the attendant just pushed the last few in un...

we headed for the zoo as our train wasn't until 21:36pm. Tried the subway system, the fellow giving out the tickets had no English but by pointing to the map we got our message across. Using a map and Joe's trusty compass we hopped on, it was a loop train with a few transfers on it, only for going the long way round the loop we did fine. At the Transfer station one train before us was packed, the door wouldn't close so the attendant just pushed the last few in un...