Time To Rest..

 Another overnight train ride. Hard Sleeper. Was ok. Anyway am still suffering from the cold so I jsut want to curl up in bed and try to get rid of it.

Xian. Nice city. It has the most complete old city walls in China. You can get up on them and walk around for abit. The hostel I'm at is called the Shuyuan Hostel, right at the south wall. Unfortunately the local council has decided to widen the road running inside the city wall and have knocked down the front of the hostel. No idea why since it didn't look as if the hostel encroached that much on the road. Still the hostel is an old-style courtyard building, 2 storey, 2 connecting courtyards. Quite nice.

The main attraction in Xian is the Terracotta Warriors. The hostel of course runs tours out to the Warriors or you can do it yourself by public transport.

For what its worth, I don't think doing it yourself is worth it. Ok, on the tour they bring you to a factory shop and a silk shop, but the tour is a very convient way to get to the warriors and I personally had enough time to see what I wanted. It is not even overpriced too much.  The warriors are amazing. Yes, they do just look like you imagine but to see them standing up in formation and how many of them there are, at least the ones that have been excavated - there are many more in the tomb but it has not been completely excavated and I believe it will not be as they want to protect the contents. Very impressive. Worth visiting.

I did take a couple of walks up into Xian. The hostel is conveniently located that it is possible to walk to the town centre - the Bell Tower and drum tower (neither of which is worth paying the money to go up). Unfortunately for me due to my cold and mad travelling, I wasn't really fit to do to much walking before getting tired. Again, Xian is like any city with similar shops found the world over. But a pleasant city to spend a few days in.