Bells, Drums & Warriors

Xi’An

We arrived in Xi’An, the former capital of China – where the emperor resided, after a 27 tiring hours train ride.

Due to not thinking ahead, we ended up spending the first night in a hotel (we arrived late at night).  The next day, we booked our Hostel and started exploring.

The city’s main attractions were the Drum Tower, Bell Tower, Big Wild Goose Pagoda with its nightly fountain show and the Terracotta Warriors.

The night is full of life with vendors lining the streets with their goods and was in abundance of neon lights. Lots of ice creams sacrificed themselves in order to cool us down (they were pretty cheap and scrumptious after all).

The Terracotta Army was packed with tourists (almost all Chinese) and it was quite hard to fully enjoy the site (it seems to be the case with most of the popular spots around China). Shoving, pushing, cutting in lines and taking their sweet time must have been taught in grade school. Note to selves: bring Tasers – anyone want to send us one ?

On the last day we took a trip to the Panda Research Center outside of Xi’An. To our surprise and delight, not only did we see pandas, along with three other endangered species (Golden Monkey, Golden Takin, and Crested Ibis), but we were also playmates to a baby brown bear. It was like playing with a puppy – extremely curious and playful (and peeing all around the place 🙂

Next stop – the Great Wall in Beijing.