Xi'An Yude Business Hotel

... to cycle around the old city walls. What we ended up with was a slightly beaten up old tandem – a far cry away from Simon’s Specialized (a fancy mountain bike for those not in the know), but once we got the hang of it we were roaring along with Simon taking care of the driving and Ali with her feet up on the back. There soon came a request from Ali to have a go at the business end as she had never ridden a tandem before. With ...

... option of heaving yourself out of the window and we were only able to open the window a little bit. With any luck the fresh (well not really fresh but fresher) air would chase away the foul air in our room. We left the window open then went out in search of some food.

Luke had a restaurant in mind from when he was here in university and so we went behind the drum tower into the Muslim quarter in search of some sustenance. The street he lead me onto was now, at night ...

... Breakfast unfortunately consisted of MacDonald's (yes, nowhere is safe!) but introduced us to the bizarre phenomenon of the sleeping Chinese people, which seem to feature in every branch. It must be something they put in the food! Every table we passed had one person sitting at it, totally passed out over the table.

I didn't know what to expect from the warriors, which is perhaps a bit of a poor effort on my part considering my degree is in ceramics, but I certainly wasn't ...

... new year). We met up with Steve, Paddy, and Andy at Steve's place to shoot off some fireworks he had bought on the street corner down the road. He had a pretty good set and it took two of us to carry it all outside. Now, normally at home we would take these for an hour drive into the countryside to shoot off, but here we followed the local custom - and just took them a full 20 steps out the back door. We were inside the gated apartment complex and surrounded ...

... mana. Passes dos campus universitaris que podrien ser tranquilament laboratoris de replicants, entremig una matriu amb 72 taules de billar a l aire lliure i menys de 144 estudiants, i abans i despres mes i mes fabriques de guerrers de terracota, que segur que de nit fan turistes i els posen en autobusos per l endema. Et passeges per les grans avingudes, constatant amb quina fe desbordant el comunisme ateu ha abrassat els deus estrangers de la moda i l esport ...

... train leaves at 20:20, but since today is the 2nd biggest holiday for the Chinese (the Moon Festival), we plan to get to the train station very early. We will be riding in the bottom bunks in a hard sleeper cart and the cost of the tickets was 195 RMB + 40 RMB commission each. We don't know how long this train ride is, but we heard it is between 15 and 19 hours which makes it the longest trip yet. Hopefully this time we will not be stuck with world-class snorers.

... overcrowded push zone, and we turned around and headed back the way we came. We walked along the roads to see if we could find a less crowded spot anywhere along the path of the torch. It was a bit harder to find since roads were blocked everywhere, police where everywhere, and the crowds of people were pretty thick. It reminded Eric and I of the St. Patrick's day parade in Ireland. It turned out to be a ...

... along, therefore our first Chinese train journey progressed relatively smoothly. Upon arriving in Xi'an in one piece we checked into our hostel, which was unlike any other hostel either of us had previously experienced. For starters it was on the 9th floor of a building containing a hotel, hairdressers and a few other businesses, and also it was really smartly decorated with atmospheric mood lighting and a luxury circular bathtub ...

... area but I managed to tell her off so she let us in (she kept on saying bible to me, was she blind or have I been losing colour?). After that we went looking for the famous food of the area, we wondered if it would match our regular restaurant in Beijing. It did not. The place was nasty, carcasses hanging around, people with meat on their backs, nasty smells, dog skins (I'm not kidding) and nowhere that looked decent enough to eat without being our last ...

... 2 first just to be different and it;s only okay, it's fairly big in size but there's still some major excavation work still needed to be done, you can't get that near either as you're on a raised platform overlooking. There are dotted about some complete soldiers and horses in glass cases with some interesting notes about them and the period. Alot of the soldiers and horses are broken and not in any real formation more scattered around than anything. We got onto Pit 3 and this is ...