Xi'an -- Good Company

Ok, sorry for the short hiatus.  I got thwarted by the great firewall for a time and haven't been able to get on this site, much less post.  China always keeps you on your toes.

Now, for the long awaited photos and stories from my National Day trip to Xi'an.

I went with three friends for the week we get off, you already heard about the god forsaken train ride, but the actual time there was great.  No lesson planning, no screaming 9 year olds (don't get me wrong, I love them, but, you know...)...  We still had to wake up bright and early but it was to see cool things, and we were all in the same place which is one of the more obnoxious parts of Shenzhen (it takes me 45 min to 1.5 hour to get to my friends).

I'm having trouble getting the photos to stay in the right order and I don't want to push my luck too far, so I present in no particular order documentation of the trip:

Xi'an noodles.  A single wide 3.8m long noodle with dipping soup.
Possibly the most difficult thing to eat with chopsticks so far.

Big Goose Pagoda and practicing Asian photo poses

The terra-cotta warriors of Qin in their massive airplane hanger type museum

Thomas and me in front of the Drum Tower.
We look pretty good considering this is right after the first train leg

Possibly the highlight of the trip for me, possibly because I sorely miss biking.
Biking on the city wall, 13km long encircling the inner city.

A display of terra-cotta figurines in the various hats of the era, of which there are many.

"The most beautiful beauty"
(description by our hired driver/guide)

Well, there you go. As far as description goes, it was very, very crowded.  We had to continuously change our plans to accommodate how very crowded it was, but we still managed to see a lot of things, most of which I had missed on my first trip.  Xi'an was the capital of China for like 2,000 years, so there is a lot of old things buried around that you can go see.  Also, a lot of museums with old pottery.  So much pottery.  We feasted on delicious things, like fancy dumplings, that long noodle I showed you, and various Muslim BBQ from the popular Muslim Quarter.  And we found bumper cars, which are the most terrifying thing in China because there are no regulations and they go super fast.

Good trip, good friends, good vacation.  Yay.

And I'll leave you with this gem:

 

The highlight of the train ride, and I mean only highlight of the train ride, was the guy coming through selling shamwows with a megaphone.