The day after our Great Wall trip was much less enjoyable. We had seen on the TV that the Olympic venues were open for the national week and decided to head there to have a look round and to go inside. It seemed half of Beijing had also decided this, making for a hectic and disappointing day. With no clear way to find out how to buy tickets, or where the entrances were, we ended up only looking around the national stadium (no idea what it's used for, but the Madejski Stadium is more impressive!) and being told that entry to the Water Cube and Bird's Nest was sold out.

The next day, we left Beijing for Xi'an. Due to the National holiday (again!) we had already discoved that trains were sold out, and had to book flights (at double the price, so fairly cheap still) We spent most of the day on the move-taking the train to Beijing Airport, then the plane, and then a bus to the centre of Xi'an. We had planned to take a taxi from there to our hostel, but they refused to go that way, and not wanting to risk motorcycle taxi's, our only choice was the local buses....after some confusion about whether the driver wanted us to get off after about a minute (it tunred out he just wanted us to pay our fare) we found ourselves getting off and making our way to the hostel. Our immediate impression of Xi'an was that it was as smoggy as Beijing, but much more relaxed-something we definitely needed!

On Friday, we went for a wander to acquaint ourselves with the town (or city...it's pretty big, but feels like a town compared to Beijing!) Finding ourselves hungry and wanting to try something local, we tried to find the "snack street". After not succeeding for a while, we chose to have a bowl of something. Literally something-we had no idea what it was, it sort of looked like a cross between potato and jelly (we've now found out it's spicy tofu-somewhat of a relief!) It tasted pretty good, but the texture was horrible-Mia was done after a few mouthfuls and I struggled on but couldn't finish it. We found something much more palatable after, though our only guess as to what it could be is a variation on a spring roll. After food, we found ourr way to a market, where we haggled our way along a narrow street, getting (what seemed to us) some bargain souvenirs on the way! We then found the snack street, but were too full to buy anyfood...the atmosphere was great fun anyway!

Yesterday, we braved the buses again, and took one right through the city from othe top end of the city wall to well out the bottom, and to the Dayan Pagoda (also known as Da Cien and Big Wild Goose Pagoda) We went for a look around there, and climbed to the top for a good view over the city and what turned out to be the best vantage point for the fountains below which were playing in time with music. After this, we went to look at the Dayan Market, hoping for some of the buzz of yesterday's one with some different goods on offer. The goods were different. It was like a market equivalent of B and Q! Needless to say, we didn't stay long!

Finally, to today. We first of all went to the CIty Wall North Gate, just a little walk from our hostel (and a death-defying dash across 4 lanes of traffic!) There we hired bikes to cycle around the top of the wall, so we could look out on the city. We were given 100 minutes to cycle only 13.5 Km, which we thought would be plenty. The wall was flat-but very, very bumpy. It was also the hottest day we've had so far, and there was no shade up there. We did make it round in 90 minutes though, with plenty of rests, and the day was very clear-the smog seemed to have gone, so it was good fun! Once we were off the wall, we found a supermarket with a sort of noodle bar in the back, where we bought our lunch-very cheap and very tasty! We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around town again, and got back to the hostel in the evening absolutely knackered!