Mixtapes + Peonies: Mid Autmn Festival: Xi'an 西安

This past week we truly felt like adventurers. We have mostly had guides and people to help us around while in China, but here we were totally on our own. Xi'an is such a cool place, so much to see and so many different people to meet. We came in by fast train on Thursday morning and headed out to find our hostel. We couldn't check in until noon so we decided to find some food and see what was close by. Apparently we were in the cell phone district because every other store was selling phones. Everyone was super hyped up due to the two new Iphones coming out. Seriously, they had some rapper come and perform outside (I don't know how popular he was) but he was throwing out freebies, Michael caught a bunny toothbrush! haha

(here are some pictures of our trip to Xi'an)

Before we got on our train approx 5:30 am

High Speed G-train

Sleepy Michael

On the subway I saw this adorable baby and decided to be a creep and take a picture :]

When we got back to the hostel we met a girl from Berlin, her name was Julia and she was studying at university in Beijing with her friend Kareem. They had plans to go to the city wall and rent bikes to ride around the wall. So we decided to join them! It was perfect weather (super cloudy and cool) because it was a pretty long bike ride and my butt is still sore. Here are some pictures from that escapade-

We then went back to the hostel to rest before our trip to the Terracotta Warriors the next morning.

Our sweet Hostel. If for any reason you want to go to Xi'an stay here!! We absolutely loved it.

We be chillin'

Oh man. I fell in love with this stray. She was so adorable and reminded be so much of Mijo. Lub her.

The Terracotta Warriors-

What a cool experience this place was!! We knew there was a lot of history here, but to actually see relics over 2000 years old was so amazing! There were 3 pits to see that have been excavated so far. I knew that they had found some that were painted, but I didn't realize they ALL used to be painted. When they started to excavate the soldiers, once the sculptures hit the air, the paint faded. Luckily they have found a way to protect the paint, so they are starting to excavate some more places. I'm excited to see what these guys look like painted!

The line for the bus to the Terracotta Warriors. HELLA long.

Pit 1

Broken guys

Pit 2

Horses

And their Drivers

Headless Soldiers

Pit 3

Archer

Middle-ranking Officer

High-ranking Officer

Horseman

How amazing it is!

Me next to this cool dude

Broken

Jade carving of a Warrior

Michael was sick of pictures at this point...

On our way home we spotted this sweet fountain. I wish we could have actually walked around it because it reminded me of the HP one.

As it was our last night in Xi'an we wanted to go see all that we could. So we headed out to the Drum Tower, Bell Tower, and the Muslim Quarter. It was also a friend of ours birthday so we headed to find some fun clubs.

Delicious fruit street food: Caramelized Grapes

The Bell Tower

The Drum Tower

The Muslim Quarter. Great food!

Bar Street

Rad club. It was straight up crazzzy. There were like 5 stages and every few minutes some act was going on. Unfortunately, I got in trouble for taking pictures so the only one I have is super blurry