The day of temples was cut short by our becoming sick of temples. We walked to the Muslim Quarter, just a short walk from the Bell tower we visited yesterday, and took a stroll around the cramped market and the packed, rotting streets filled with more interesting sights and smells than you'd necessarily care for in a single day. One minute you'd pass a mobile bread stall, producing tasty baked treats for a group of kids; the next you'd pass a ...

Today we spent our first full day in the city proper, exploring the streets in search of towers. Yesterday was about Terracotta, today was about towers, and tomorrow will be about temples. We walked in terrential rain from our hostel to the Bell Tower, which as you might have guessed holds a giant bell, and lots of smaller bells. There's a bell performance which unfortunately we arrived just too late and wayyy too early for (they are held peri...

Another day, another tour, another tour guide, another "big car". Our tour guide appeared at the door of our room an hour before we were set to meet in the foyer, to confirm our appearance and inform us that we'd need a form of ID, and an hour later we were following her onto an hour-long coach ride outside the city to the small town surrounding the actual Terracotta Army complex. All that lay in the area before they started to find ...

There's so much ancient architecture here that there are just some things that you can't even find on the internet. Half way through our marathon 26 hour train journey, punctuatd by a dying man's coughs and a rude man's constant stares, we spotted from the window two giant, Easter Island-style heads, on the peak of one of the larger hills. I've tried every single combination of terms that could maybe lead to any kind of internet page about jus...