Xian, China

I have to say, that Xi'an (said she-ann) was a very cool city to visit. As an added bonus, we stayed in an even better hostel than the night before.

In Xi'an, there are old city walls in the center of the city. They used to obviously surround the city, but now the city is too big to fit inside. The south gate used to be the starting point of the silk road. Briana and I hired a guy to drive us on the wall a short distance.

We walked around the Muslim Quarter night market the first night. It goes on my list as favorite markets I've been to. You can find many stands selling dried fruit and nuts as well as knock off bags, shoes and everything else you can imagine. There are an assortment of vendors selling arts, crafts and also exotic teas.

This is a brushes shop.

We also got the chance to try cow heels. I didn't mean to order the dish, but the waiter didn't understand that I said no and sent me the dish anyway. I tried it. Besides for being extremely spicey, it wasn't that bad. Very tender. I didn't eat much of it, so I gave it to a begger that had come up to our table (we were eating outside.) Bri and I were shocked to watch him down the plate in 3 seconds considering how spicey it was.

This is me eating cow heels.

The next day, we got up early, and rode the bus to see the Terracota Soilders. The tourist attraction was suprisingly well laid out with marble steps, a park, shopping plaza, and museum. I was a little disappointed at the trip because it wasn't as amazing as I had imagined.

Inside pit 1, the largest of the three.

Afterwards, we got back into Xi'an and paid a visit to the Big Goose Pagoda. It is 7 floors high, and they say the higher you climb, the more successful in life you will be. Of course, we climbed to the top.

We also had lunch at the best dumpling place. We enjoyed pork dumplings boiled and steamed, and also a plate of prawn dumplings. The nice thing was that it was all free. The locals sitting next to us paid for our lunch and bought us beers!

This is us enjoying our dumplings.

So I absolutely had to post this picture. This is Brianna and some locals outside the Pagoda. Everywhere we go, the local people come up to her and ask to take a picture of her, or most often, with her. Of course they definately don't want me, I had this one lady come up and I actually thought that she wanted me in her picture too, but she pushed me out of the way! I roll in laughter inside everytime!

We left Xi'an last night with a very positive perspective of the city. Definately a place you wouldn't want to miss if comming to China.