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After an 13 hour train journey in a cattle carriage we have arrived in Xi'an safely. We were greeted by possibly the nicest taxi driver ever...NOT and the worst pollution.
Matt spent most of yesterday walking round Xi'an trying to get bus tickets to Shanghai as we found out when we arrived that the train tickets need to be booked 10 days in advance and we leave in 3 days. After a brief walk through a red light district and seeing the majority of Xi'an in the 5 hours he walked around, through no fault of his own, we finally got them!
Today we went to the Muslim quarter and haggled with success and bought some really nice things. We also tried some local cuisine which was nice, tonight we are off out to see a fountain display at the Great Pagoda.
Still cant seem to upload the photos but will try again in Shanghai.
Speak to you all soon xxx
Hi All,
We are still alive sorry its taken us so long to update the blog.
So since the last blog in Xi'an we went to see the Goose Pagoda light show, apart from we all got lost and by the time we got there is had already finished. It was still really pretty and me, paul and laura did some traditional chinese dancing with some of the locals...it was more like line dancing at one point i just started doing the macarena just to see if anyone noticed!
We went to see the terracotta warriors the next day the bus left at 9am and we didnt get there until about 1! because they took us around factories trying to sell us stuff...damn tours. The terracotta warriors were amazing, there is still one huge pit that they covered back over to preserve all the colours due to the fact that when the air is exposed to the statues all the paint corodes off the statues (bit of useless information there for you.)
We went out for dumplings for tea to a place called De Fang Chang, which according to lonely planet does the best dumpling in Xi'an, they were totally right and i think i am getting slighty addicted to dumplings. We went to the downstairs part of the restuarant (cheaper) but upstairs you can have a dumpling buffet (no quiche lol) for 100 yuan which is about 10 pound but Matt isnt keen on them plus 10 pound on dumplings is a bit excessive. They make them into all different shapes like toads (which incidently have toad inside them) and fish, we managed to take some pictures of them tho.
The next day we went on a bike ride round the city walls its 17 kilometers, none of us could walk properly after as our bums were so numb, but it was a beautiful sunny day we show some Chinese Opera singers practising in the park. On the way back we caught the start of the drum fesitval performance, which is a daily ritual at the drum tower with the guards.
We then left Xi'an to head to Shanghai for a week which me and Matt were really looking forward to, we travelled by sleeper bus which took 18 hours..will update on the Shanghai blog how it went.
XXX
- comments
Paul xi'an rocks
Craig Sounds like you're having an amazing time so far. I'm very jealous, keep safe. Craig