China Trip..... Stop #2 - Xi'an

Terracotta Warriors

Wild Goose Pagoda

On the City Wall

Day 3 we landed in Xi'an and had dinner and went to bed.....  Much needed rest....

Day 4 started with the trip to the see the Terracotta Warriors.  Now, let me be very up front, I only added this stop to the itinerary because Vim wanted to go there.  I had not done much research so I was essentially going into it a little clueless.  Let me just tell you... our tour guide (Ruth) was amazing and she explained all the detailed history about the warriors....  wow!!  Just in case there are a few of you out there are a little 'clueless' too about the history of the warriors, let me fill you in.  Essentially the first emperor of the Qin dynasty built over 8000 Soldiers out of terracotta clay.  Each soldier is over 6ft tall.  Essentially these soldiers were built as part of the preparation for the emperors' afterlife.  They were placed in underground pits all around his tomb.  The tomb, the pits and the warriors, were constructed in 246 BC.  They were only discovered in 1974.  Ironically, they were discovered on March 29, which was the same day that were were there.....  36 years later.  So even though they are so old, they escavation sight and discovery is very new.  From here we went to see the Wild Goose Pagoda and the City Wall.  The day ended with a dumpling dinner (or dunkling as Milan was calling it) and a Dance show.  A lot packed into a day!

Day 5
We had a trip to one of the local museums and then it was off to our flight.  This was taking us to Lhasa in Tibet.

Overall Xi'an was very peaceful, in an almost eerie kind of way....  The city only became big (or known) because of the Terracotta Warriors. This is the main attraction in this town.  There is currently a lot of construction going on, a lot of tall building are going up everywhere.