Day One in Xi'an
Trip Start
Jun 11, 2008
1
25
349
Trip End
May 14, 2009
Xi'an,
Shaanxi,
China
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
This mornings task was to cycle along the full length of the City Walls. This was 14km in length - Lorna frowned again. I soon appeased her by indicating that at the end of th wall was a KFC - Lorna smiled again!
The full journey took about an hour and a half as we kept stopping for photo opportunities. It was blinkin' hot though...about 35 degrees. There was some glistening sweat and some strange smells around upin completion of the cycling adventure. To be fair, the wall is pretty flat, but the combination of the 18th century bikes and the odd pothole, put paid to any testicular activity for the rest of the day!
Muslim restaurant - with beer!
!As promised, the completion of the task was rewarded with a KFC meal, which was great.
After KFC, we continued our excercise day by walking the entire city (well it felt that far, but it may only have been 25 yards!). We went to take a look at the Bell Tower and the Drum tower in the centre of the city. The Bell Tower was used to signal time and the drum tower was used to get the men fired up for war. You can go inside, but there isn't that much to see and we wanted to get to the Muslim quarter to check out the markets.
These markets are on a street locally called Islamic Street. It goes on forever, and then round the corner! They sell everything down these streets, bags, food, replica souveniers, animals and Crickets in Cages! This was a wierd sight, a cricket ina little cage, no bigger than a rubik cube (remember them). This looked very cruel because "I don't like Crickets....oh no......I love them...oh yeah". That's for all you leather on willow fans out there! Anyway, we moved on and ended up only buying too iced lollies - god we're tight. We are actually daving the cash for the markets in Beijing and Bangkok though.
Dunc's birthday
After a quick change at the Hotel, we were off down the Muslim Quarter again to have a neal. We were all out as a group of 13 as it was Duncan's 31st birthday. We actually found a restaurant, in a Muslin area, that sold beer! Mmmmmmm.
The meal was fantastic though, we had skewers, mutton soup, lamb ribs, chicken wings, crickets (only kidding), sweet cashews and loads more. We then brought out a surprise birthday cake for Dinc. I think he was impressed. we then sang Happy Birthday, then our tour guides did it in Chinese - now that was comical!
After dinner we headed off to the Panda Pagoda (I think) where there is a fantastic fountain display to light and sound. It went on for about 20 minutes and was really effective - definitely worth the visit. It was about 25 minutes away from the city centre, but a taxi only cost us a quid!! Of course, Lorna needed tha moment to jump into the fountains to get a photo shot - always wanting to get moist that girl is!
After the fountains had done, we headed down to bar street for a few beverages of the alcoholic variety. Not too many were consumed as we knew we had an early start for the Terracotta Warriors visit tomorrow morning - they weren't visiting us, we were visiting them, in case you were confused! Up at 7am tomorrow morning then, I will be wearing my crash helmet as I attempt to awake the slavvering one!!
