Xi'an

This post was from October 20, 2008.

Just got back from Xi'an. Man, that was an amazing trip!! For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted to visit this city! So much history here, it's awesome! Xi'an was the ancient capital city of China. Qinshi Huangdi made it the capital city when he first united China. This is also the home to the famous Terracotta Warriors.

We boarded a night train leaving from Beijing heading to Xi'an. We had what are called "hard sleepers." They are beds lined up 3 high on both sides of a tiny room. They are not the most comfortable beds around, but they were just fine. It was Friesht, Lex, Fabian, Federico, Anja, Julian, and myself that went.
We woke up in the morning just as our train was arriving in Xi'an. We checked in our bags at this place near the train station and then boarded a bus to go check out a palace and the terracotta warriors. Our first stop was a palace close to Qinshi's tomb. It was really nice. It is located just on the south side of Jade mountain. We walked around for a while, and stopped at a souvenir shop to buy some jade souvenirs.
After that we went to visit the Terracotta Warriors. This was an awesome site to behold! Something I always told myself I wanted to do before I die. There are 3 covered sites where they have unearthed these Terracotta Warriors. There is a huge project that has been going on since then to restore them to the condition they were in before they were buried. We were able to see people working on piecing them together. It was amazing to see how someone could mobilize people to make such a thing!
We then went back to the city to pick up our luggage and then check into our hostel. It was a really nice hostel in a very convenient location. After getting settled in we had dinner and afterward called it a night.
The next day we went to Huashan (one of the 5 famous mountains of China). This was such a beautiful trip! We hiked up to the top, which took all day! The view from up top was breathtaking! All along the way up there were very steep staircases (like what you see from the movies of those Buddhist temples located in the mountains). Every once in a while you could see someone carrying lots of stuff on their backs, to take up to the hotels and restaurants that were located at various spots up the mountain.
After returning from the mountain we went back to the hostel, ate a quick dinner in the Muslim quarter (which was cool), and went to bed. The next morning we got up and went to the south part of the city wall (still in tact from when it was the ancient capital) and rented bikes to ride all the way around it. The whole trip took about an hour and a half. We then ate lunch and walked around a bit trying to find some temple but then it started raining on us, so we just went back to the train station to head back to Beijing.