Shaanxi & Xi'an, China

From Shanghai, I flew east to the dusty, dry province of Shaanxi, to visit the famous city of Xi'an, best known recently for the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors, which was the main reason for my jaunt down there.

Xi'an was again, very different from both Beijing and Shanghai - very different feeling - a bit more frontier town, neither really cosmopolitan or very political. I had originally gone to see the Terracotta Warriors, not realizing that there were a ton of other amazing things to see there, so I ended up having a very full trip there. The only downside was that it was freakishly hot for April in Xi'an and the temp was 38 degrees C on the day I spent travelling in a taxi without air conditioning for the entire day of sightseeing... I hadn't really planned on that, so it was a bit of a test.

I stayed in a very cool hotel, the new Sofitel in downtown Xi'an, which was very funky and ultra-modern. I had no problem lining up an English speaking driver who was my guide for a couple of days and very entertaining (which was a good thing, given I wasn't paying for air conditioning). We started by doing a brief tour of the city itself, stopping at the Xi'an City Wall, which runs 9 miles around the entire old city of Xi'an. This is unusual, because most of these kinds of city walls were destroyed, so this is a bit of an anomaly, built in 1370. It is 40 feet high and there are many places to climb up and walk on the wall to get a great view of the city, both inside and out.

From there I visited the Great Goose Pagoda (known as the Dayan Pagoda) which is apparently one of the finest surviving pagodas in the world. It is about 200 feet high with ricketly wooden stairs leading to the very top, which gradually gets smaller and smaller. It's especially enjoyable to climb the stairs in sweltering heat with hoards of tourists, but it had to be done. The gardens around the pagoda are stunningly beautiful, with perfectly manicured rose and flower gardens, and many other smaller pagodas - the entire thing looks like a picture.