Roaming in the Rain

Our visit in Xi’an has gotten off to a rainy start…and end. But hey, we won’t let that dampen our adventures (I had warned you that one of us super cheesy).

Day 7 (Xi’an): We woke up to moderate rain yesterday and thought it would be a perfect day to visit the Terracotta Warrior Museum, where we’d be warm and dry. The only trick was getting to the museum. I had done some research and found out that the city has a public bus that takes tourists to the Terracotta Warrior Museum from the Railway station, which is about 1.5 miles/40 minute walk away from our Airbnb. No worries, we’ll just brave the rain for 40 minutes,  then be nice and warm inside the bus and then scoot inside the museum. Perfect.

So got a little wet on our walk and then the rain picked up a little more when we waited in line for the bus and got just tad bit more wet. The bus was pretty warm and we were starting to dry off during our ~1 hour bus ride to the museum. Our bus stops and and its a bit more of a walk to the museum. The signs were a bit confusing but we were able to find the ticket office and head inside….to the giant outside park complex that leads you to the different pits with the Terracotta warrior. Oh. This wasn’t going to be all inside. Oh. We’re going to have to walk a bit more in the rain to get to the Terracotta Warrior pits? They’re not all connected underground? Oh. Let’s just say we got super drenched that day; however, it was still really cool to see the Terracotta Warrior exhibits and the work they are doing to restore and uncover more. There are three Pits and we had read that #1 was the most impressive. So we worked our way backwards from Pit 3 to 2 and 1 was our grand finale. Despite the rain, the place was still a bit of a zoo- it was packed to the brim with tourists and you had to politely nudge/assertively elbow your way in to see the pits. Overall- an interesting experience. We had dumplings last night at Three Sisters Restaurant and ended up walking to dinner and back (we had originally planned to taxi since it’s ~3 miles away from our place). We also visited the Wal-Mart and I stood in the Home/Beauty department, which is the department my mom works at back in the states.

Day 8 (Xi’an, last day in China): Today was mostly a planning/catch up on life day.  We woke up to an overcast sky this morning and got a later start than usual. We did a WhatsApp call to Matt’s Dad and Facetimed with my mom in the morning- both which worked well and was crystal clear…which is pretty darn neat!  We then booked some accommodations and did some planning for Japan. After, we decided to go for a short run to the old city walls and the minute we stepped out…it started to lightly drizzle. But it was very light so we pushed forward. On the way, we found a post office and Matt was able to mail 5 postcards back to the states (75 cents apiece!).  When we got the wall, we stopped by a local shops at what seemed to be a stationary district to look for a sticker for my journal. I LOVED looking at all the beautiful notebooks they sold but were unable to find stickers. We decided to turn back to our place when the rain picked up…and we got drenched again. 🙂 Oh well. Our clothes will dry! Since we have an early flight out tomorrow, we decided to re-visit the Muslim restaurant by our place for dinner. However, this time we knew to ask to crumble our own bread for our yangrou paomo (mutton) and nurou paomo (beef). The owner and other local diners seemed pleased that we knew to/were actually crumbling our on bread. When in Xi’an, right?

What were some rainy trips that you have been on?

Xi’an streets

MAP goes for a Xi’an run!

Matt at the old city walls of Xi’an.

The yangrou paomo bread at the beginning.

Matt expertly tearing up the bread.

Earning our meal: breadcrumb output!

The yummy yangrou paomo product.