Sunday, January 5, 2014

In Which We Get Yelled at a Bunch

So, here goes on our second day in China! This post might be a bit shorter, but we had a couple new experiences, and I'll definitely write about them. Day two was our second day in Xi'an and, as it turns out, there's not a lot to do in Xi'an besides going to see the Terracotta warriors. What there was, we did, though. We went to the historic bell and drum towers, where they don't actually use the bells and drums anymore, and we also visited the Great Mosque of Xi'an and the Muslim quarter of the city, which was awesome. There was tons of different kinds of interesting food and lots of activity, but it wasn't overly crowded, which, I learned on this trip, is something that I hate. We also had our first experience at a Chinese market, and let me tell you, that was interesting. Here's a word of advice if you're considering shopping at a market in China. Do you like/mind very aggressive salespeople who know only enough English to hawk their product and who yell that English at you and who won't give you a good price unless you haggle with them a lot? They also have a tendency to jump in front of you so you won't walk past their stall. If you don't like that, Chinese markets are not for you. It was a little overwhelming. But we bought a couple things, and it was funny to see things like Rolex watches and Mont Blanc pens and The North Face jackets and backpacks out in a street market, because you know that they have to be fake. We ended up buying a decorative scroll (we have like six of those now, we're going to have a wall devoted to them in our house) and I actually bought one of the aforementioned North Face backpacks. How much did I pay for it, you ask? Well, it took some talking, but I managed to get the guy down to 100 yuan, which is about 16 dollars. The fact that Nancy was standing there telling me that I didn't need it probably helped a bit, too. Anyway, we also visited the old City Wall (Xi'an is one of the few cities in China that still has its city wall intact) and partook of some of the Western delights that China has to offer, namely a Blizzard at Dairy Queen. Also, did I mention that it was freezing? It was FREEZING. We ended up going inside a mall to get away from the cold. Here are some of the pictures we took.

Big bell at the bell tower. I'm pretty sure it's not the original one, but it was still kind of cool.

Nancy.

All I can say is, when people talk about China being really polluted, they're not lying!

View of the drum tower from the bell tower.

Looking down the street from the bell tower. 

Nancy up on the bell tower.

They do performances on these bells. We missed it.


Front of the bell tower. And some random Chinese guy.

Drum tower.






Roof guardians! I always think these are cool.

View of the bell tower from the drum tower.

Great Mosque of Xi'an! I took a picture of this because, besides there being a few things written in Arabic here and there, the Great Mosque really just looks like most other old Chinese buildings.

Entry arch



This was called the Phoenix Pavilion. It's actually pretty cool. You'll see it in the next picture.

As you can see, it kind of looks like a bird.

Front gate thing.
Out in the Muslim quarter. We bought this flat bread and also some kind of delicious fried bread something with something inside of it. I don't ask too many questions about street food.

The street in the Muslim quarter. You were pretty much always about to get run over by a scooter.

The city wall! We could have gone up on it, but we decided that we were seeing a wall later and we shouldn't bother to pay for it.



Then there was this thing that I took a picture of.

Blizzards! I got a tiramisu one because it sounded awesome and they don't have that in the USA as far as I know. I was a little disappointed. It tasted kind of like coffee. But the guy turned it upside down for me, which is cool. They never do that in the United States.
The inside of the mall we went to. It had like seven floors and a basement. We thought the
escalators were cool.
My new backpack!

The new scroll we bought. We may have a lot of these, but this one is pretty fantastic.
Anyway, that's the story for that day. We caught our flight at the airport that night and got to Beijing just fine, and we even got the fastest taxi driver on the road to get us to our hotel! Seriously, he passed like, every other taxi and car that we saw. It was awesome. That's all. This is Captain Danger out.

2 comments:

  1. They do turn them over in the US, i have seen it... fyi :)

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  2. tiramisu does have coffee in it.... fyi :)

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