Day 30 18/10/2014

Xi'an is another massive Chinese city with a population of c6.5 million people.  It was once the terminus of the Silk Road.  Today it's a metropolis of sky scrapers, noise (especially from mobile phone shops) and smog.  Despite its Ming era city wall being intact without the nearby warriors it's difficult to see what would attract visitors here.  After breakfast we headed to the train station to collect our tickets for our onward journey to Yichang.  It was organised chaos at the station and although hard to tell it certainly looked like there was money changing hands in exchange for a place at the front of the queue.  We queued for around 20 minutes and collection was straight forward swapping a reference number and passport check for two tickets.  After we headed south on the local bus (very different experience to the local buses in Japan) to visit the Big Goose Pagoda.  The Pagoda is Xi'an's most famous landmark and dominates the surrounding modern buildings.  It was built to house the Buddist sutras brought back from India in AD 652.  Craving a western style drink we popped into Starbucks for a mango smoothie on the way back to the hostel.  In the evening we headed to the Muslim Quarter, another throwback to Silk Road era.  The narrow lanes and alleys are full of shops and stalls selling everything from street food to tourist tat.  Some of the food smelt appealing although we weren't too sure of the contents.  We did treat ourselves to some small potatoes cooked in a tasty albeit rather fiery spice washed down with fresh pomegranate juice.  It was crazily busy with people on foot, bike, moped, tuk tuk and car.  We were relieved to come out unscathed!  On the way back we saw a man skinning a rabbit in the street near our hostel.  Didn't help Diane's willingness to be adventurous with the local dishes and we defaulted to chips and beer for supper.