Friday, January 3, 2014

In Which We Go to CHINA!

So, here we go! It's time for me to start blogging about China! I'm going to break it down a bit, because otherwise this would be a crazy long post. I'll start with a post about our first day in Xi'an and then go from there.

So, our first day was reserved for one thing: the Terracotta Warriors! We had breakfast from a street cart (I think street carts are awesome and I wish we had more of them in Korea) and then finally managed to get a taxi to the train station, where we caught a bus. I'd just like to say that it's a lot more difficult to get a taxi in China than I thought it would be. We took the bus out to the terracotta warriors, and while we had to dodge a very aggressive tour guide who wanted us to hire her, we managed to get in unscathed. The place was awesome! I've seen pictures all my life and I never thought I'd actually get to see it, but there we were! Here are some pictures that we took.

I think this is supposed to be the guy who had the place built. I don't really know, though.

We started taking this picture and then the guy nearby yelled at us. Apparently we were supposed to pay. Oops.

So awesome!

I'm totally stoked to be there.

Two random strangers who said they were from Oregon took this one for us.


Close up. Nancy thought the guys without heads were funny.

So many!



Me with some of the guys they're working on restoring.

This guy hasn't been excavated yet. They have signs up that say the excavation is still a work in progress, but it really doesn't look like there's a lot of work going on.


Nancy with a high-ranking officer in the exhibit hall.
I'm not sure what else to say about this place except that it was awesome! Also that it was ridiculously cold, and you'd think the pits (there are actually three) would be warmer because they are inside of buildings, but that notion in very false. It was freezing in all of the buildings in this place. I took a couple pictures at the other two pits, but they're a lot darker and the pictures didn't really turn out. After we looked at everything we went to a souvenir shop and bought some figurines and we found out later that we got thoroughly ripped off. Oh well. That's what to expect, I think.

When we made it back to the city we had a little trouble because it turns out that when you try to hail a taxi from the train station in Xi'an, you have about seven people descend on you telling you that they have a taxi and they will take you where you want to go, but what they actually have is a shady-looking minivan that is not a legit taxi and you have no idea where they'll actually take you. We ended up walking back to our hostel. But, that was good because we discovered a cookie shop and got some ridiculously cheap cookies (food in general is really cheap in China) and also bought Nancy a new set of pajamas (also for really cheap).

We had a little trouble finding a restaurant that night. I came to the realization that unless they had pictures or an English menu, we couldn't order anything. We did eventually find one. We took a picture of our food.


That evening we also wandered around the downtown area a little. They have some cool historic bell and drum towers down there that they light up at night. We took a few pictures of the area. Here they are.

The bell tower.

The drum tower.

There were a couple guys selling kites next to the drum tower and they had these cool long strings flying. This isn't the best picture, but I thought it was cool.

Nancy and I with the drum tower.


Extended shutter of the bell tower.
So, that's about all I've got to report for our first day in China! Overall it went pretty well, and I remain stoked that I got to see the terracotta warriors. Seriously, they were so cool! This is Captain Danger out.

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