Our last day in Beijing was pretty quite. We did make it out to a street market to try some of the more strange local foods, but all we could muster was scorpions and crickets. Honestly they pretty much taste like whatever they are cooked in.. in this case they tasted burnt. From there we headed back to the Red Lantern to grab our luggage and departed for our 9:30pm train at 6pm. Needless to say we were a little early and spent a good two hours in the waiting area, with about a billion other people, until we boarded.
It was our first train in China and not knowing what to expect we splurged on the deluxe. It consisted of a private room with two beds, a private western bathroom, and an extra chair. Overall it was pretty nice and we quickly fell asleep for our 12 hour train ride.
We arrived in Xian around 9:30am and started looking for a taxi to the Hyatt. Unfortunately, the train station was mobbed with hundreds of people standing outside. Xian must be a popular station for local farmers because people were sitting and laying outside all over the place with huge sacks of stuff. Chris was quickly approached by someone offering to drive us to the Hyatt. While it was probably stupid to take the guy up on it it worked out. He was basically trying to sell his services for other tours around the city while we were here and did not charge us for the trip since we told him we might call him..... We didn't call him and just used the Hyatt to reserve a tour. The Hyatt was nice enough to let us check in early and even upgraded us to a junior suite. For what reason I don't know, either they felt sorry for us or that was all that was available. It has a living room, bedroom, and two bathrooms. Not to bad for a free hotel. After the long ride on the train we decided to take it easy and lay around the Hyatt and finish our trip plans for Europe. Of course that didn't happen since it was 2.5RMB a minute to use the internet at the Hyatt, so we spent the better part of the day looking for an internet cafe. We finally found one that had no AC so we checked email quick and headed back to the room.
Back at the Hyatt we decided we would be the classy guys we are and do some laundry by hand in our junior suite at the Hyatt. It was pretty ridiculous the two of us in the bathroom, Chris washing the clothes in the sink and handing them to me (standing in the tub) to rinse them off and ring them out. It took all of about two pairs of socks to turn the water brown forcing us to change it 3 or 4 times before we were done. By the end we had laundry lines stretched back and forth across the bathroom for them to dry. This morning we awoke to a room full of we clothes, absolutely nothing dried, so we decided to move it out to the living room in front of the window. I honestly can't imagine what the maids must of thought today. They walk into a room that probably cost 500 dollars a night and there is underwear and socks strung out in front of the window. That's us, all class.
While the maids were taking in our handy work we were out on a tour of Xian. It included stops at the Big goose Pagoda, the porcelain factory (that makes terracotta replicas), the Terracotta Warriors themselves, an Indian Village, and the wall around the city. The Big Goose Pagoda is the tallest and oldest pagoda in China, at least that's what the tour guide said. The one interesting thing was there were monks chanting for the victims of the earthquake a few weeks ago (Chris got a video that should be on flickr in a few days). From there we went to the terracotta factory and loaded up on warriors. I bought a good size one that will probably cost more to ship than to buy. Not sure if it was a good price, but it was factory direct and they claim to be the cheapest. From there it was to the Terracotta Warrior site itself. There are 3 main pits that have the soldiers in them. Pit 1 was the first and most impressive of the three. It is massive and each warrior is supposedly slightly different. At the back of Pit 1 you can see where archaeologists are still piecing them back together. The other two pits had much of the same, but were not as big or as excavated. Over the course of the tour we learned that there is an estimated 6000 terracotta soldiers buried at the site and that there are 5 main types infantry, captains, archers, horseman, and generals, which all made by hand. After finishing up at the Terracotta Warriors site we headed to what amounted to an indian village. That's all I will really say about it, but for those who know what an indian village is you will know why I don't have to. From there we headed to the Xian city wall. It was cool, but at that point we had spent the better part of 10 hrs in 98 degree heat so we were done.
That will about wrap it up for Xian. We head to the train station tomorrow bound for Shanghai.
