Prepare yourself for A LOT of photos!
There are a few photos of things I did with Mum from last weekend, but i'll save those because it's a bit of an overload of photos otherwise.
On Tuesday, Mum went home, which was sad, but good in a way as I guess it means that i'm well enough to not be looked after in a 'watching you constantly' kind of way. I was sad to see her go, but we went to the airport together because Matt and I were off to Xi'An for a couple of days to see the Terracotta Warriors, something I have wanted to do for as long as I can remember.
We landed on Tuesday morning after a 2 and a half hour flight, and were at our lovely hotel by midday. We went for an explore around Xi'An, which is a very interesting ancient walled city, built by the first Chinese Emperor (who also built the warriors and the great wall of China - and was incredibly nuts - he built a river of mercury around his tomb to stop people robbing it!)
We found some great back roads including one selling all things calligraphy - the brushes are just wonderful, and come in all shapes and sizes. Some are enormous!
It was very very hot, so of course stopping for an ice cream was of course on the agenda.
Then, we went up two towers; the Drum and the Bell tower, which face each other. Both had incredible ceilings. This one was especially fabulous...
The bell tower is in the middle of a roundabout!
We then discovered one of the most interesting streets I have ever been down. It was in the Muslim quarter of the old city and was just full of street vendors selling all sorts of food. It was interesting to see the mix of arabic architecture in with the Chinese, and to see arabic translated into Chinese writing too.
Of course, we tried a few things. The meat on a stick was lovely (and messy), but the bread, which looked fabulous, was like cardboard!
The wall around the old city was very impressive. There are watch towers every 120 meters because archers could reach 60 meters, so it meant that every section of the wall was fortified in case of attack.
There were random groups of dancers and tai chi everywhere, which was lovely.
Our hotel was very nice and this was our view from our window. There was something going on in the gardens on Tuesday night. We couldn't quite work out what it was, but it made the gardens lovely and colourful.
Wednesday was terracotta warrior day! The day we had been waiting for1
We were picked up from our hotel at 9am, and it was about an hours drive, with about 8 other tourists to the terracotta warrior factory; basically a factory where they told us about how they make the replicas and we could buy things. We did buy a few warriors I must admit.
It was quite interesting seeing how the mini warriors are made...
Then it was on to the warriors themselves. They are more than 2000 years old, and are each about as tall as Matt, which would have been considered huge 2000 years ago! There are 5 pits in total, with only 3 being open to the public. 1 contains 2000 warriors on display. There are another 4000, but they are still covered up, because the colour on the warriors disappears after a few seconds of being exposed to the air. Archaeologists are waiting for technology to catch up so that they can preserve the colour.
Pit 1 is very impressive, in a huge warehouse and full of the infantrymen warriors. The ones that are being reassembled are there too, all held together with tape and bubble wrap. It's fascinating to see how they come out like a jigsaw and are assembled so carefully.
Pit 2 was the slightly more important warriors, so there were chariot, infantry, archers and cavalry. This guy below is a chariot driver.
Pit 3 was the command module, and chariots too.
In the museum there are the 2 bronze half life sized chariots, which were just fabulous!
Below was our final stop after lunch, which was the mausoleum of the first Emperor, who built the warriors. The hill is all you can see of the mausoleum, since his tomb has not yet been opened. Archaeologists have done scans of the tomb and apparently he is surrounded by a river of mercury to put off any tomb robbers.
It was such a great day, despite it being very hot, and we were exhausted when we got back to the hotel, so just had some Dim Sum at the hotel (dumplings, rice) and went to bed early.
On Thursday, our flight wasn't until 4.30pm, so we had planned to do lots of sight seeing, but it was SO HOT! We ended up faffing about for most of the day and not really achieving very much at all. In the morning, we got a cab to see the Big Wild Goose Pagoda, which was an interesting pagoda with Indian influences. The grounds were lovely, and we even walked to the top of the pagoda (248 steps!)
After that the faffing about started, so by the time we had eaten lunch it was time to head to the airport, for a very bumpy flight back to Shanghai.
Today, I had a doctors appointment in the morning, and every test result has come back negative, which is brilliant news. The main concerns were MS or something to do with my auto immune system, and it is neither, so that's great. We will just have to wait until the MRI on Friday to see if the shadows on my brain have changed at all, but for now, feeling very positive.
