Terracotta Army

Up about 8:00, had breakfast, then walked to the park area near the Bell and Drum Towers hoping to see old Chinese people walking backwards. Nope.

Back to the hostel and waited for the 9:30 Terracotta Army tour pickup.

16 of us on the tour from two related hostels, including a handful of Canadians.

Our guide was awesome. She spoke good english and had a great sense of humor and was very energetic. She was concerned about us using our passports for id, and asked us if we had other id. One girl from Holland (Ellen) didn't, so the guide gave her a fake id that she could use. The picture on the fake id didn't look anything like Ellen.

We visited pit 2 first, then pit 3, then pit 1, the best pit. While it was really cool to see and I'm glad I did it, it wasn't that "Wow" moment I was expecting. Still the work done to create the army is remarkable. And they recently found another pit (pit 4) which has more warriors.

After that we headed to the tomb of the guy who built the army (I think), which consisted of us seeing a big manmade hill from a distance. We took pictures of it from ther distance.

Our guide was very touchy feely and would often walk arm-in-arm with a few of us and chat, including me. At the tomb, she wrapped her arm around mine and whispered to me "I have a special gift for you!" Then proceeded to bounce away, giggling. Confused.

We went for lunch, and she randomly came over to my table and stuffed a piece of bread with a sweet sauce into my mouth. The girl sitting beside me laughed and remarked how odd that was

As we were walking back to the bus, she came up to me, grabbed my hand and put something into it, a replica of one of the terracotta horses. How sweet. One othjer guy got a gift, I don't think anyone else did. Ellen, the Dutchu girl, didn't.

On the bus back to the hostel, Ellen and me made a date to bike the old city wall tomorrow,and a bunch of us decided to head out for supper a bit later tonight. We made arrangemens to meet at the Starbucks between the Drum and Bell Towers at 7:30.

Back to the hostel, showered and vegged, then headed for Starbucks at 7:30, 5 of us altogether. We headed to the Muslim district for supper, then walked around all the shops for a while, then headed back to our hostels around 10:00.