Hominns (Tumen Hotels) Xi'an

... for position with the thousands of Chinese who were also there. Pit 1 is the best of the three pits; there are about 5,000 warriors in this one with an area at the back for warriors that are being repaired. Pits 2 and 3 are mainly full of partial warriors and debris as they are still being excavated. There was also a small museum with two half sized bronze replica carriages, that Tomic our guide was really keen we should go ...

... was a unanimous decision to bail on the Super 8and we found a much nicer, cleaner and cheaper room immediately across from the Drum Tower: the Melody Hotel.

Our new room was not yet ready to receive us and so we headed out of Xi’an to the site of Terra Cotta Warriors. It was a bit of a challenge getting there as when we hit what appeared to be a bus terminal we couldn’t firstly figure out which bus to take and when we finally found out we couldn’t find ...

... have figured out a way to blend the old and new in a liveable fashion.

The Muslim quarters are touristy but still great for eating out and checking out the locals. We rented bikes and rode them at the foot of the city walls and listened to locals siging opera in the park. A nice city this is...

... find yourself the Western style toilets as there was one on each of the traisn we were on, even though they may be a few carriages down. The people there are not exactly friendly in the railway station in Beijing, or even Xian for that matter, they carry bags on their backs and barge when they want to get past and dont like moving for our cases with wheels. We bought our onward tickets to Pingyao at this train station without any trouble, our guesthouse wrote the names of ...

... that the poor were shoved to the outer parts of the city as we saw slum after slum, more slums, some with satellite dishes, some with no roofs. Nice ride though, first bit of exercise either of us have done in a fair old while. So as mentioned, we were in tandem, and it was almost a flawless exercise in teamwork! Got a bit hairy going up and down corrugated ramps, but the main thing is we survived as did our bums, just. The front wheel was buckled, handlebars shaky ...

... did have some cool stuff in it like 2,000 year old crossbows and arrows. The coolest thing by far though was their replica of the Lingtian woman, a Neolithic woman that was found in a province of China. I didn't recognize the name, but the face was unmistakable. She was found in the sixties, or rather her skull was, and I am not sure of how much else of her remained. She has been on the cover of science mags and news ...

... from all over flew into Xi'an to go see the warriors with us! Several tour groups full of westerners were there too. We finally found out where the hotel was and tried to hail a cab-no luck. Seems our hotel was outside the ancient city gates and all the traffic was going INTO the old city. So, Travis studied the map and decided we could walk. So, off we went. Xi'an is a lovely city-noticeable different from Guangzhou and Zengcheng. It's bigger than Zengcheng but much smaller and ...

Quickly as this is costing me now that the laptop has lost it's battery power. A definite must. We would have liked to have stayed longer. Only 2 nights at the Bell Tower hotel RIGHT in the centre of the city. Great city, visiting the Bell Tower, the Drum Topwer, the Muslim Quarter - lots of street food, a tour of course to the Terracotta Warriors but also the Big Wild Goose Pagoda and the Bempo Neolithic Village. All good. We even bought some ...

... the real thing involved the creation of an artificial mountain, thousands of terracotta soldiers, walls and a tomb 150 metres below the mountain). There were also some of the usual nice little historical facts like he had everybody killed who worked on his mausoleum to protect it's secrets and he had quite a few of his concubines buried alive when he died. That was pretty much all to see in Xian really so we decided to get out of town. At the train ...

... for the day was cycling round the best maintained city walls in China. 15Ks in 80 minutes. Over 100 minutes and we would have had to pay double. (up to £3.50 - woooo) It was a bit bumpy, the corners smelled of pee (there were no toilets on the building so I suppose when you have to go, you really have to go) and the views were largely of the featureless sky scrapers that now are the Chinese urban ...