April 17- Monday. Xi'an. It's sunny and will get up to 28C today.
Up by 6:45, shower and down for breakfast. Another nice breakfast buffet. Lots of choices. On the road again by 8:30 and headed to a Jade factory....Nothing worthy of buying. Secondly, we go to the Terracotta museum. A guide explains the process of making these warriors.

Our guide

We go for lunch after the museum and before heading the see the real Terracotta warriors.

Another typical lunch, but never bad really.

There are three pits were the Terracotta warriors were found in the 1970's. Our guide talks a bit then lets us loose to discover on our own, or with 3-4 thousand other tourists. It's pretty amazing and to think there is so much work left to do as not even half of the warriors have been unearthed. Also, very few have not been broken in small pieces. It's a work of precision and patience by the experts to put them all together again.

There were three of these buildings housing the Terracotta warriors.

Still so many broken warriors. It'll take a lifetime to find everything that was buried so many years ago.

It's very hot and sunny today. Feels good. After the visit it's time to get to our Optional Tour. Only 12 of us chose to participate in this. It is the Tang Dynasty Dancing Show followed by a Dumpling Banquet. It's a really great show, musicians, dancers, etc. I could have passed on the Dumplings afterward, but Ron was happy with the meal.

We go for the food portion of the show. Not really looking forward to it but I end up trying all but one type of Dumpling. There are about 12 kinds in all. They serve a little dessert to finish it off.

Tonight we must leave our luggage outside of our room by 10:30. They will be picked up and held downstairs for the evening. Earlier in the morning they will be driven to the airport so that when we arrive our check-in will be done and our guide will just pick up our boarding passes.