Xi'an

Xi'an was the first place I visited and was definitely one of the most enjoyable parts of my trip. Like I said in a previous post, I got in at 4 in the morning on a night train and proceeded through the deserted city like something from 28 Days Later. The next day in Revolution Park (with the big stone book) was a bit dull but we strolled through the Muslim quarter afterwards which was very cool. If anyone reading this blog gets a chance to go to China, please check out a Muslim restaurant because I have only found good food in them. You will know if it is a Muslim restaurant if the men are wearing small white hats. On day two we went to The Terracotta Warriors which was really boring (just take a look at my pictures and imagine you went). Although it is a UNESCO World Heritage site, I really wouldn't recommend it. On my third day (my friends' fourth day) and last day we went to the Giant Wild Goose Pagoda (the tall brick structure). It was okay, but since I know virtually nothing about China's ancient history I didn't quite understand why it was significant. Fortunately one of my friends knows an unhealthy amount of Chinese ancient history and acted as a tour guide for us. Apparently it was built for a returning monk who was to translate all the scriptures he collected on some epic journey (probably got the story completely wrong but I think I'm close). Later that day we biked around the city walls which was a lot of fun because we got to see Xi'an from a different perspective. In retrospect it was probably a bad idea to bike the wall right before we went to Huashan, which we barely made it up all the way. Next post will be about us scaling Huashan.