We arrived early into the station to be greeted with rain, it was slightly warmer then Beijing though. The plan today was to visit the Terracotta Army, which thankfully was undercover. The army was created about 2000 years ago by the emperor to protect him after he died and was buried. Initially he was going to bury his real army with him, nice!!! However one of his advisors suggested if he did this there would be no army to protect his son who would rule after him, so he had the terracotta army built.
This consisted of thousands of soldiers, archers and horses all buried around him to watch over him. The detail is amazing, each facial expression has been captured and preserved for thousands of years, as the potters who made these studied the real soldiers and copied their features, unbeknown to them, as they would not want to be preserved like this as they would believe their souls would become trapped here after they died.
The following day was bright and sunny as we headed to the city wall to do a cycle tour of 14 km along the top of it. I have not ridden a cycle for about 25 years so was interested to see how I would get on, and slightly apprehensive too. All was well, it was just like riding a bike! We cycled along taking in the morning views of Tai chi by the river, with the chinese music playing from speakers all around us, it was such a chilled out vibe! I love this city, more than Beijing as I feel it is more like the traditional China but still modern at the same time, like Beijing but not, same, same, but different! It is more relaxed and friendly then Beijing, and really a beautiful city, at night it comes alive and is buzzing, but you can feel the warmth and excitement all around, it has a wonderful atmosphere! We tried some of the local speciality, noodles and had an early night!
In the evening we went to the Muslim Quarter where we wandered the streets and markets and tried some street food!! People here are so friendly and the place was alive, but still not much english was widely spoken so was always fun trying to find out what things were and order them :)
The following morning we were up at 4.50am to get our flight to Yang Shuo!
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