Xi'an, China - Da Ci'en Temple Entrance

Camera in hand, I made my way off of the bus and starting taking pictures. In the distance is the Big Wild Goose Pagoda (Dayan Pagoda)...our destination.

Xi'an, China - Early Morning Street Scenes

Our group is up early and touring.  Here is what we see on our way to the first tour stop. People on a regular bus are on the way to work, or shopping, or school.  Someone asked me if I saw a lot of people riding bicycles in Beijing.  No, not really.  Transportation modes have changed over the last decade or two.

Xi’an, China – The Tang Dynasty Restaurant

I took some photographs and video during this meal and show.  I didn't edit these very much and left some blurry ones in the video so that you could at least get an idea of what we saw.  I am learning how to work with video so that sound and movement can be added to the blog posts.

Xian, China - City Wall

I was very excited to get to the top of this city wall.  80 steps, and we were on the top.  Not much activity going on today as far as street entertainers, but there were walkers and bikers all along the walk.  We didn't get to stay very long because bus #1 was tired and ready to return home. Rats!!  I photographs as much as I could and was last to get back on the bus.  

Xian, China - Shaaxi Museum

We stopped at a museum complex with a wide collection of artifacts from various dynasties.  This guy greets you at the front door!

Xian, China - Noodles for lunch

We had lunch at the Terracotta Soldiers complex.  The big draw was to be able to watch someone make fresh noodles. He starts from a single piece of dough and then folds, stretches, folds, stretches until he has thin noodles. He was very fast.

Xian, China - Terracotta Soldiers

This mere size of the discovery is amazing.  This is Pit 1, where most of the finished soldiers are staged.  The statues were found crushed, and have been pieced together.  Truly amazing work.  This is about the size of two soccer fields.  You can walk all the way around it.  The finished soldiers are in this front section, further back is the area where they work to piece them together. Slow and tedious work.

The complex is huge, with three pits on display in various stages of discovery.  Restaurant and food available. A must see!

Xi'an, China - Noodles for Lunch

Our noodles were hand made and fresh for lunch.  You can see all of the action that goes in to making these very long noodles.

And the end result!

 Long pause holding the noodles for the photographers gathered around...

China Tea Service

We were able to enjoy six different types of tea. I was soooo excited. Yes, I bought all that we tasted and drove a hard bargain (and got a free mug!).

Temple of Heaven

Beautiful temple in Beijing. I am surprised that I got this pic with only two people.

Room with a View

I couldn't wait to post this. This photo shows the shower blind open. Beautiful bathroom

SwissTouches in Xian

Thus is a photo of the uber modern room. I will add a photo later that shows the blind open.

Xian from the Hotel

We are settled in to Xian for the next few days. The hotel is SwissTouches. What a modern hotel!! It took 30 minutes just to explore all of the buttons in the room. The big find was how to lower the window blind for the huge window that separates the shower from the rest of the room!!

Flight from Beijing to Xian was uneventful. The airports are new and very large so we had quite a ways to walk. We had some items in the bags that made Security scan multiple times. All in all, a fun day.