Xi'an Alas, we have been incredibly decadent today. We have spent the equivalent to one night's accommodation on coffee and cake! I am not at all remorseful- I enjoyed and savoured every sip of coffee and morsel of my baked cheesecake (o.k it was about eight pounds).
We are in Xi'an at the moment and it is a much wealthier city than Cheng du. We were wandering back from the Little Goose pagoda to find the very fancy smancy part of town and a Hagen Das cafe. This Hagen Das seemed to be inbred with Ritz and we had a vey posh afternoon coffee indeed. My affacatto was so good I could have cried:)
Xi'an, like the affacatto, is pretty cool. I like it almost as much as Beijing. Bigger than Chengdu ( 6.9 million), it is also a lot cleaner and therefore nicer to walk around(though morning smog has ruined all my photos). It still has its old city walls, which are massive. The coolest part of town is the Muslim quarters. It is a mix of hutongs and proper market areas. Its buzzing with people, yummy food and almost anything you want to buy. We have been there both day and night and it is worth walking through the streets at different times. At night its really vibrant and alive, whilst in the day you can just stroll and browse through the markets in a relatively calm manner.
The big daw card to Xi'an is the Terracotta Warriors. As fate would have it, the warriors are on their way to London for a temporary exhibition! But there were still plenty of warriors left to see. The warriors are on display at the actual excavation sight and so you see them situated in the chambers that they were found in. The whole exhibition is pretty cool, especially when you see how much work was placed into rebuilding the warriors - they were found smashed into pieces.
Leaving Xi'an tomorrow means that we are also officially leaving behind winter! Yeah! I can't believe we didn't have one proper snow fall the whole trip! We will be spending 2 nights in Guang Zhou before we head into Hong Kong for chinese new year and meeting up with Ana, Jayson, Gabby and Todd (double yeah!).
Anyways hope you are well and having a lovely day :) Tanya
