China Trip - Day 4 (Xi'an)

Ben and I really enjoyed our train ride from Beijing to Xi'an (pronounced She-an). I had never slept on a train before and it was awesome. When we arrived in Xi'an
we were picked up by our hostel and then taken there. The hostel was clean and cheap, and we had a double with a bathroom (including a shower) so it was awesome. We pretty much dropped our bags and then headed to see what most people see when they come to Xi'an, the Terracotta Warriors. We took a couple of buses to get there, but about an hour or so later we arrived at the museum that displays a lot of the Terracotta Warriors. We hired an English guide who took us around and explained some of the history. Though the warriors themselves are thousands of years old, they were only discovered in the mid-1970s by a farmer who was digging an irrigation well. We were told by our guide that if we were lucky we'd get to meet that farmer and get his signature at the end of the tour. Any guesses as to if we actually got to meet him? Yep we did (as I assume most people do) but you had to buy a book in order to get his signature so we passed. So a museum was built over the pits to protect the warriors. When they were first found the warriors were brilliantly painted, but because of the exposure to the environment, the warriors lost their color. We first saw pit one, which was my favorite and contained the majority of the restored warriors.

We then saw pit three which was the headquarters and then pit two which was barely excavated but contained several of the more important finds or better restored finds from the pits. There was also a building that contained some bronze items and other things besides the warriors that were found. The museum was pretty cool as was the surrounding area.
After spends a few hours here we took a bus back to Xi'an and made our way to the center of the city where the Drum tower and the Bell tower area. We tried to have an early dinner at the De Fa Chang Dumpling Restaurant, but it wasn't open when we went there so we checked out the Drum and Bell towers first and then went back. We had one of the dumpling banquets which was really good. We were first served 4 cold meals and then the dumplings started coming. Three plates of two dumplings each plate came including a sweet dumpling, a vegetable dumpling and a pork dumpling. We had a full plate of pork dumplings, then a plate of shrimp dumplings then three baskets of dumplings with all kinds of stuff in themincluding duck, and then a hot pot including small chicken dumplings. It was very filling and since we didn't really have lunch we were hungry enough to eat most of it. We didn't get these dumplings, but they were on display. We explored the Muslim district including the Grand Mosque and the market in the area. The drum tower and moon looked amazing as night fell.We then took a taxi to the Big Good Pagoda where we were lucky enough to catch the nightly fountain show.

We were pretty tired and so that ended our first day in Xi'an.