Terracotta Warriors

Terracotta Warriors

In the morning, we headed out to the star attraction of Xi’an, the Terracotta Warriors. A bus leaves from right outside the hotel and took us directly there, comfortably. First up we visited the museum, which is a large modern building, with nice air-conditioning and is well organized. The museum’s collection consists of some better-preserved artifacts from the digs of the area and is worth checking out. English signage was good. After about half an hour, we headed to see the pits of the warriors themselves.

Unintentionally, we visited the pits from least interesting (smallest) to largest – it turned out to be a good order to do things in. The pits are semi-air conditioned, and it was comfortable wandering around even in the heat of the day. Although signs up everywhere said “no cameras”, everyone was taking photos even right in front of the guards, so we ignored the rules as well. We got some good photos, but a tripod would certainly help here.

When heading back to town, beware of the more expensive shuttle buses that will try to entice you in. We are guessing they leave when full, and the cheap public bus was very fast anyways.

We killed time until our night train. If we had to do it over again, we would have spent less time in Xi’an – we sort of ran out of things to do (although fortunately there was good shopping).