Xian’s Warriors

We awoke to a lot of yelling in Chinese at 630. Apparently an entire bus of Chinese tourists had checked in here as well. We and the bikes are filthy after the rain and dirty roads yesterday. It is almost impossible to get laundry done here. We have hand washed the clothes, but the suits need a machine. A car wash for the bikes is a much easier thing….maybe we will just pressure wash ourselves?!

We have 502 km to ride to Xi’an, which is where the Terracotta Warriors are found.

We set out at 730 and made the toll entry like pros. Orvar blew past the exit and had to ride back on the verge!! We had decided to ride about 150 km to near Linfen to refuel and get breakfast. We parked at the restaurant and this caused a huge crowd to gather. They all wanted a photo with the foreign bikers.

The scenery today is almost all industrial and the pollution horrific. There are a few breaks in the smog!

We made another stop after 180 km and got gas since it is easy on the highway to use the pump.

The plan was to go to the hotel, which was booked on the outskirts of the city, but near the metro. The Terracotta Museum is 30 km north east of the city. The city air quality is visibly terrible and much worse than elsewhere we have been. Arriving to the city it was enveloped in smog. I am not sue how anyone can live here. The traffic was not to heavy and we had no trouble getting to our hotel.

We had a few hours to relax and the after getting some local advice we walked about 15 min to a packed restaurant for another amazing meal.

This guy with the phone was taking pictures of Dan in the pharmacy!!

View of the smog from the hotel.

We were up early and walked up the street to get a Chinese breakfast pancake! Next door to the vendor is this fancy bakery!

Our driver is down with the gout, but he will deliver us to the Warriors at 830. This is about 45 min away on the freeway. The place is mobbed with Chinese and a few foreign tourists. We had several hours to explore the excavated areas.

We had about a hour wait for Mr Tang who was at local clinic, so Starbucks it is, and that meant it was after 2 when we got back to the hotel.

We needed to wash the bikes they are filthy and this took over an hour for 4 bikes (with a few cars interspersed) at the shop next to the hotel.

Then it was 415 when we finally set out for the metro to downtown.

This takes 45 min and by the time we had walked 700 m to the museum we were told it was too crowded today and we could not get in (today there were 12,000 visitors). Disappointing as it is supposed to be very nice with artifacts from several thousand years of Chinese history.

Again we could not find a cab that would take us the 5 km to the city center and after walking 2 km we got on a city bus to the Bell tower.

Near here is the Muslim quarter, which is a number of streets packed with people and even kind of street food and souvenir.

Then we made for the Drum and Bell towers again and to the subway for another 45 min ride back to the hotel.