Travel Blog for Fredrik and Gunnhild

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Xi’an

Xi’an – Chengdu

Fredrik 15 October, 2009 Chengdu, China, Xi'an

Most of this day was spent waiting and traveling, but we had time for some city sightseeing in the morning. We walked by the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower before going into the Muslim quarter. The first part was mostly souvenir shops, but we managed to find a more genuine part as well where all kinds of food where cooked in the streets.

We also stopped at the Great Mosque, founded in the 8th century. Very peaceful and an interesting blend of Chinese and Islamic architecture. The minaret was disguised as a pagoda.

After a lunch buffet (35 NOK) and a beer at the hotel we took a taxi to the airport. Our flight was quite late by the time we reached Chengdu. We also had a little trouble finding our hotel since it was located on the 27th floor in the back of a shopping mall. But both the room and the view was nice.

Fredrik 15 October, 2009 Chengdu, China, Xi'an

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Xi’an

Fredrik 14 October, 2009 China, Xi'an

We were picked up by the brother of our taxi driver from yesterday at 9 am. He took us to The Army of Terracotta Warriors – known as the 8th wonder of the world. This is a huge archeological site still being excavated, and they have found more than 7000 full sized terracotta warriors and horses. Each soldier is very detailed and they all have individual features, hair and facial expressions.

On the way back to the city center we stopped at two other archeological sites. The Tomb of Qin Shi Huang is believed to be one of the grandest mausoleums ever. The tomb reputedly took 38 years to complete and required a workforce of 700000 people! But it is considered too dangerous to excavate, so there wasn’t really much to see. The Banpo Neolithic Village feature the 6000-year-old ruins of a village, the earliest example of the Neolithic Yangshao culture.

Back in Xi’an we booked a meeting with a travel agent and went for a bike ride on the city walls. They are around 12 meters high, wide and 14 kilometers long. Half way around the wall, we saw very dark smoke coming up from just inside the wall 3 kilometers away, it was a big fire!

At 6 pm we met with the travel agent in the executive lounge and finally managed to arrange our trip to Tibet. It wasn’t cheap but we got it exactly as we wanted. Soft sleeper (which is very difficult to get) on the train from Xining to Lhasa on Sunday, 2 full days for sightseeing in Lhasa and a flight from Lhasa to Chengdu.

We have updated our travel map!

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Fredrik 14 October, 2009 China, Xi'an

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Beijing – Xi’an

Fredrik 13 October, 2009 Beijing, China, Xi'an

After an early evening and a late morning we checked out of the hotel in Beijing and headed for the airport. After a 2 hour flight we arrived in Xi’an and took a taxi to our downtown hotel. On the way we organized a tour for tomorrow which was a bit challenging since the taxi driver only spoke Chinese. But with a phonecall we were able to confirm that we had agreed on what we thought we had agreed on.

The hotel in Xi’an was very cheap so we had booked an excecutive room. This was a bit more fancy than expected, and it took us nearly 10 minutes to turn on the bathroom lights… 😉 The best part was access to the executive lounge where we spent quite a bit of time drinking beer and making travel arrangements.

We found a very nice Chinese restaurant just down the street and had a great, spicy, vegetarian dinner. We had a table close to the kitchen area and were quite facinated by watching the five chefs prepare the food.

We did not take a single photo today (!!) but the rest of our photos should be available under “More photos” (to the right).

Fredrik 13 October, 2009 Beijing, China, Xi'an

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