Another Rest Day in Xi'An

Due to the exhausting day yesterday at Hua Shan, and the fact that I still fell like I'm coming down with a cold, I decided to take another rest day.  (I feel a lot of pressure to do something interesting every day for the sake of my blog, but not today sorry :-()  I did some shopping at a local market that I found (sadly still no pineapple beer), and I updated my travel plans - I extended my stay in Xi'An an extra week, and am no longer stopping in Chengdu or Lijiang.  I arranged for some Chinese lessons here in Xi'An, so starting Wednesday I'll be back to school.  (Also for the 2 weeks that I'm in Kunming and the 2 weeks I'm in Guilin as well.)

I did do a bit of wandering around so I'll post a few pics of a couple of different interesting areas of Xi'An.

First - food!

I broke down and ordered the American Breakfast at my hostel (with coffee and kiwi juice):

For lunch I had a spicy beef soup (and beer of course) on a patio on Bar Street:

This area seems to cater mainly to foreigners (I had french fries here before) but it was a nice day and I felt like sitting on a patio to write my postcards, so I decided to  pay the premium.  Just look!  Isn't it worth a couple of extra bucks for the view?

There is an interesting street near the South Gate that caters entirely to artists!

(Or those of us with pretensions.)  It's mostly oriented at Chinese painting (chops, ink, brushes, paper, etc) but there are blocks and blocks!  It was very exciting for me.

And of course the Muslim Quarter - 回民街 (Hui Min Jie).  This street is ful of food and restaurants and souvenirs, it's quite a lively and exciting place, especially at night when it's all lit up, and quite packed too.  Despite the crowds cars and motorbikes are constantly pushing their way through honking their horns.

A few pics:

The crowds at night.

A biang biang mian restaurant.

Lamb, beef and tofu on skewers.  No pork here, sorry :-(

You will find many local specialties here.  Of course there are dozens of specialties, but hundreds of stores, so a lot of vendors sell the same thing.  For example the most common store seems to be a nut vendor.  The machine in the picture is turning the walnuts with salt (?) and possibly roasting the nuts (?)  Although I don't think I've seen anyone actually buying these nuts.

And of course lots of souvenirs!  Of the souvenir stalls, the only thing that has really tempted me is the bobble-head terracotta warriors.  I don't want to have to lug a bunch of stuff all over China, but these are just really cool!