Xian, China Saturday 19th May 2018

Happy 3rd Birthday Charlotte, looks like you had a great birthday.

For those of you wondering, Greg was a bit sore and achey today, nothing that a few drugs couldn’t ease.   Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit better.

Was a great day today, we were on the bus at 7.30am heading to a park where the locals go every morning to exercise, dance, play music and sing.  Was fun watching them enjoying themselves and encouraging us to join in.  I was in my element taking photos.

Next we went to another craft market, then to a restaurant where the two options were spagetti or chicken and rice.  The main reason for going here seemed to be they had western toilets.  ?

After lunch it was another 20 minutes on the bus and we were at the Terracotta Warriors.  The warriors were built 2200 years ago by Emperor Qin (Chin) to protect him in the afterlife.  They were discovered in the early 1970’s by a farmer, Mr Yang who was digging a hole for a well.  (Greg met him 25 years ago, when he was here. Mr Yang signed a book about the warriors for him).  The area that has been excavated has grown enormously in the last 25 years.  When discovered the warriors were in pieces, and have been pieced back together.  I loved being there to see them, was mind blowing.  For me it was worth coming to China just for them.  Again I took so many photos, looking forward to getting home and being able to download them.

There are 5 pits, the first one is the largest, it has 6000 warriors, 1,400 have been repaired.    Pit 2 was discovered in 1994.  It has 2000 warriors and 300 have been repaired.  The other pits are smaller.  Made me wonder how many other treaures are buried beneath the earth.

I loved the few hours we spent with the warriors.

It was back on the bus for a 1 hour ride back into town.  We visited the Muslim Market  it was really colourful and vibrant, lots of different types of food.   Unfortunately we only had half an hour here, we both would have loved more time.  We had to head out to a Tang Dynasty dinner and show.

We are being served so much food, you don’t just get one dish for a meal, you would never go hungry and tonight was no exception.   I declined the last few courses.  As mentioned before we are not very good at cultural shows.   But this one was of a good quality, and the costumes were beautiful.  Our guide explained the premise of the show beforehand and there were subtitles before each act, a bit like the Opera.  The story was about a female Emperor in the 7th CenturyEmpress Wu, the only female Emperor in the history of the dynasties.  She was 67 when she became the Emperor, she died at 81, in that time she had 200 male Concubine.  Guess she was a busy girl!

We arrived back at our hotel around 9pm.  There was a birthday looking cake in our room. Not sure what that was about.  We had a small piece each with a cup of tea, it was delicious.   What is left over would feed another 10 people ?

Another early start tomorrow, on the bus by 6.40am.  We are flying to Beijing, our last city of this tour.