kez & hay travels 06

Before catching night train to Pingyao we posted our winter clothes onto New Zealand.  Confident that the weather was getting warmer, you can imagine our joy when we woke up to 3 inches of snow at Pingyao.  With no gloves or hat we spent the first 3 hours in this beautiful walled city cycling around looking for an ATM Machine.  Ironically this small city was the first place in the world to bank a cheque but nowadays you can't find a cash point for love nor money!!!  Our hostel was in the centre of the walled city and was a typical Chinese courtyard from the Quing Dynasty.  The bed was wall-to-wall and filled half the room.  Pingyao was beautiful and all the houses within the city walls dated from the 700's.  The people were very friendly and again amused at seeing 2 foreigners riding around on bikes!

Back on the train - top bunk - we travelled overnight to Xian.  Although this is a walled city it is 50 times bigger than Pingyao, and it is quite hard to believe that this huge city has the original city walls still intact.  This city has a large Muslim population and we went to see the Great Mosque (the biggest in China).  The next day we went to the Terra-Cotta Warriors independent of a organised trip, so we were very proud of ourselves for saving a grand total of 4 pounds each!  As you can imagine the Terra-Cotta Warriors were fascinating - there were hundreds of warriors restored and lined up in the vaults, but there were still thousands yet to be restored.  It is hard to believe that these thousands of terra-cotta warriors were hidden from public knowledge for centuries, even though they were only a few metres below ground. 

Next day was Easter Sunday and we had a 18 hour train journey to look forward to.  Despite our efforts we could not find any chocolate to make up for the lack of Easter eggs.  we had to settle for 2 pots of noodles!