The Adventures of Amber: Xi'an

A tower atop the Xi'an city wall

The next stop on our China tour was Xi'an. I had alreaAdd captiondy been to Xi'an in October but Nathan obviously hadn't and you can't come to china and not see the world famous Terracotta Warriors. We decided we'd spend a few days in Xi'an, and I did to mind seeing as I loved the city the first time I visited. We saw some of the same things that I did on my last trip to the city but we also saw some new things as well. I didn't join Nathan to visit the warriors again as I was feeling very ill from a cold that had gotten the best of me. I'm kind of glad that of all times to not be feeling well on the trip, it happened when we were somewhere I had already been. I won't bore you with what ice already written about xian but I will tell you about the new things we saw and did.

Tomb of Emporer Jing Di
We flew from Guilin to xian and arrived into xian around lunch time. There is a tomb of a different emperor than the Terracotta Army that is out near near the airport and is hard to reach from the city so we decided we would go there on the way to the city. We had heard tons of positive reviews online about this tomb, some even stating that it was better than the warriors so we were pretty excited to see for ourselves. We had a hired driver drop us off and then wait for us to take us back to the city afterwards. He gave a little bit of background on the tomb which was nice as there wasn't much to be found inside the tomb.

As we headed underground and into the tomb, we were very underwhelmed by what we saw. Once again I think this goes back to the fact that we didn't have much background info to help us understand and appreciate the context. The tomb was filled with thousands of small figurines that looked almost like dolls. They were all missing arms because they were made of wood and therefore had rotten away over time. There was also the remains of old wooden chariots and thousands of figurines of animals. It was pretty cool to see but also very hard to see because the lighting was so dim. I think they were hi got preserve the artifacts but it must made it hard to make out what was in the pits

After lexploring the excavated pits of the tomb we wondered through the museum. Th ,used, would have been very helpful to enlighten us on the tomb and life of the empower but unfortunately there wasn't much information in English so we were left to use our imagination.

All in all we were left feeling a bit disappointed by what we had saw. The hype of it was so great and I felt it wasn't all that it was talked up to be. I'd say it is Xian's most underrated attraction for a reason but that's just my opinion.

The great mosque
Because Xian is at the very end of the silk route, there is a large muslim population living there. Last time I was in xian I had the chance to explore the muslim quarter but I didn't get to see the great mosque. I made it a priority this time around and was not disappointed. It was so old and so beautiful and interesting as it was built in a Chinese Fleming it was cool to see how the Chinese had adapted Muslim religion to suit their history. What made it even cooler though was that there were many practicing Muslims in the mosque.

Biking the walls
I had already biked the walls, but I had loved it so much the first time, i wasn't going to let Nathan not experience it! This time, for a change of scenery I suggested we go in late afternoon so that we could enjoy the sunset from the city wall. We got up and biked around and it was just as mesmerizing as the first time. The feeling of being up on that wall is amazing. You watch the city move beneath you but on the wall, it feels very peaceful serene. We made it all the way around and returned the bikes in time to go and sit down and catch the sunset. We sat watched the sun go down and the city light up as dusk fell. The wall was lit up by beautiful red lanterns strung all the way around and the many buildings atop the wall were lit up as well. It was so beautiful.