Summer has been incredibly busy. I've been having so much fun cycling that June really flew by. In July we got a 1 week summer vacation. Including weekends it was to be 9 days off. We booked flights and got visas well in advance. We 
decided that we wanted to see Beijing and Xian so we started thinking about overnight trains and how many days we'd need in each city. As the difference between a flight just to Beijing and one that included both destinations was almost nothing, we forgot all about soft sleepers and decided to fly. It was a good decision because throughout our trip we heard stories of sleepless snoring nights.We arrived in Xian and found the directions from the hostel very easy to follow. We got to the hostel, Shuyuan Hostel, around 6 pm and put down our bags. The room was great. A private with two twin beds an ensuite bathroom and air conditioning all for the price of $12 per person per night.
The staff let us know about a park near Big Goose pagoda which was really nice at night. They said there was some kind of water show, but we didn't know what to expect. It turns out that about a whole city block park had a synchronized and choreographed water fountain show to music! Not only that, but because it was on ground level, all kind of people were just hopping in and getting wet to stay cool. We wandered around for a bit and found some souvenir stalls. When we got to the other end of the park, we saw some people just dancing to music. It wasn't a show but it again was all choreographed and it was kinda like line dancing.
The next day we went to see the Terracotta Army. It was really amazing because it's such a new find in terms of world wonders and also because it's quite amazing. I mean, there are over 7,000 life sized, hand carved statues that were made only to bury. It 's pretty insane, but at the same time, this guy Qin Shi Huang started work on the first Great Wall, unified China, ,and built a massive nation wide road system. Anyway, definitely impressive.The next day, we saw pandas. It was really quite amazing. We didn't see them in the wild, but at a rehabilitation and rescue centre. I was a bit confused about why they needed to be rehabilitated and rescued, but they explained that the pandas are having a tough time coping with climate change. Some of their natural habitat is becoming too warm for them. After I heard that, the air conditioned enclosures began to make sense. The pandas actually spend their time indoor so much in July primarily because it is REALLY hot out and the love the air conditioning, but also because it's breeding season.
There were other animals at the rescue centre as well, but none so cute! Here is a Golden Taukin they're no longer on the endangered list, but still at risk. Heres a Golden Monkey. He ate the leaves off branches
that we gave to him. Don't worry it's good monkey food, not candies and chips like some people stick in the cages at Korean 
zoos. This bird is a crested ibis. Pretty darn unique and a bit creepy with their bald heads. 
However, the ibis was not nearly as creepy as the vulture. I've never seen a vulture before so I was completely shocked at how close to reality all the cartoons are! 
I mean, mouth agape, just waiting for something to die, head stooped low, bald head with beady leering eyes... just thinking of it gives me the willies! Phew, change of subject... and of course a red panda.
The next couple of days we looked around Xi'an and saw a few of the sites. The first was the Bell Tower and the Drum Tower. There was a musical performance when we got to the drum tower that was pretty neat because we saw some strange looking instruments making even stranger sounds.
After that was the
Great Mosque. I was particularly interested in this because I had no idea that there were Muslim people living in China at all not to mention as far back as 700 AD. Maybe I'm totally ignorant but I always thought that China pretty much only had Chinese people that believed in Confucianism. It was quite beautiful with all the Arabic writing on tablets that were hundreds of years old.We spent some time wandering around in markets, too. We saw some pretty quirky things. I'm really proud to present this next picture as Curtis almost made me delete it 7 times. We were running out of room and I had to get rid of some doubles
as it was, but he thought no one would be interested in blue eggs, so he pestered me and almost took my camera away to delete it himself, but then a lovely camera supplies vendor in China struck a great bargain with me. 2 more gigs for me and 25 bucks for him. Good trade I said and I kept my darn blue eggs picture. Feast your eyes on the magnificence and please leave comments to let Curtis know you appreciate my vigilance.
We saw many other cool things too, like this cricket in a cage, and all these beautiful gates everywhere. That's actually one thing that I really loved about China, you can tell that their modern building are influenced by their traditional architecture. They still have old gates everywhere and some malls have typical wooden style rafters. It was really beautiful!
Next was the Temple of the Eight Immortals (Please read with Jack Black's KungFu Panda voice). It is a Taoist temple that monks live and study in and it had my favorite art and paintings of any other temple I've seen yet. I love how Tao art shows their legends. They use really swirly clouds and their characters are very full of life.
Phew, that was a busy day. On our final day before we flew out we cycled the 14k square city wall. It wasn't around the entire city but the downtown part was mostly enclosed within it's borders. It was fun to ride bikes with pretty cushy seats, but no gears because you're butt didn't get sore and you couldn't pedal any faster if you tried, so it forced you to take a more relaxed pace. Even at that we finished in about an hour and a half. It was pretty cloudy, so we didn't get a great view of the city itself, but the battlements on the wall and a surrounding park were gorgeous enough for us. Then we got on a flight to Beijing.Next is Beijing. Because we got to fly, we saved time and a sleepless night. That just meant that when we got in we had plenty of time to find our hostel and settle in for the night. Overall, I would say my impression of Beijing as a city was sheer massiveness. Something that looked like a 5 min walk on a map took 20. We were so worn out and exhausted after our first day of sight seeing that we only really saw one sight and came back to the hostel to escape the heat and tiredness. Another thing that stuck me right away is the living conditions. For such a huge city, quite a bit of the population lives in traditional 2 story housing rather than apartments. It was quite different from being in Seoul where you can't even see houses anymore, just apartment after apartment. Our hostel was in the middle of one of these communities and it was the greatest part of our stay there. We got to see locals as locals are and be the polite friendly and curious people that we are.
On the first day, we decided to get a big spot out of the way. We tackled the Forbidden City. To get there you walk through Tienanmen Square. It's the largest public square on earth. There really wasn't too much there, mostly cerement, a few monuments and Mao's Mausoleum.
Next was the Forbidden City itself. It was humongous! We couldn't see it all because as I mentioned before, it was too hot and exhausting. The first thing you see as you walk in is the first gate and moat. On the gate is a giant (about 10x12 m) photo of Mao. They still love him there and you can see his preserved corpse at his mausoleum. It was really bewildering to me, but very endearing in a way. They loved this man so much and truly felt he did amazing things for them, yet he employed similar fear tactics as all dictators. Still, they love him.
Ok, back to the site. The Forbidden City is aptly named because for 500 years no commoners were allowed to enter. All of the roofs were 
interesting because their tiles were all gold. I'm sure it was painted, not actual gold metal, but I could be wrong. There were extensive gardens and little pagodas all over the place. Asian palaces, as far as I've seen, typically have a lot of space, but many of the buildings within them are small, unlike palaces in Europe. The buildings are all very ornate and decorative, but in terms of space themselves, they're never more than a couple stories high (that I've seen anyway). Pagodas tend to be higher, but are more prevalent in temples than in palaces.
The next day we planned to go to the Great Wall. I tried not to psyche myself up too much as I didn't want to be disappointed. The Great Wall is one of the 7 Medieval wonders, there is so much history surrounding it, it was built with incredibly low technology for such a vast undertaking, many people suffered and died to see it built, and it's breathtaking. Maybe it's just the section that we saw, but the way it snakes through the hills, it almost seems like a rope bridge because it follows the mountains curves so precisely. It's not huge, not high... just amazingly long. It was stunning. Oh, and we learned that it is not visible from space, so stop spreading that silly rumor!
We had just enough energy and motivation to also see the Temple of Heaven. It was a really mellow place where people were just hanging out all around. In some of the covered pathways there were older ladies singing and men playing the accordion. It was super neat to see. The structures at the Temple of Heaven were interesting and different from most of the other things we'd seen, but we were still more struck by the amount of green and the rows upon rows of trees than the buildings themselves. Feast your eyes!
