We arrived in Xi'an (which seems be be pronounced she-en or see-en interchangably) just a few minutes after we woke up, and we lugged all our bags (I'm sure they've multiplied recently) across the platform and out into the station courtyard. There were hundreds of buses waiting, and we were grabbed and pulled from all sides by people wanting to give us lifts. We were determined that we'd get a metered taxi this time, and besides, when someone grabbed my rucksack while I was wearing it and almost pulled me over, I objected to them on principle! We were ushered to a green and white taxi with a meter and put our bags in it. We showed the driver where we wanted to go, and he seemed unimpressed. He pulled the parking ticket off his windscreen and stood around chatting to people while the YHA representative tried to recruit us. In the end we had to change taxis, and the driver demanded a flat fee. Being tired and grumpy I just insisted on him using his meter, and I was sure that the mile-long trip would probably cost half of what he was asking for. He capitulated after a couple of minutes but refused to take us all the way to our hotel, leaving us about 400 yards away and demanding more money to take us closer. We just walked the rest of the way.

The hotel room was large and clean and I slept until about 10.30. Then, after a nice hot shower and some clean clothes, we went out to have a look at Xi'an. The weather was horribly grey, everything was dusty and dull and it was cold. After searching for a restaurant for ages and an internet cafe, we found a pizza place and cheered ourselves up with junk food. The eight-year old boy on the table next to us disappeared for about forty minutes and returned with a salad bowl full to the point of architectural genius. He had built a perfect wall of cucumber slices about eight inches tall round the rim of the bowl and used it to hold the rest of the contents. During our time in the restaurant, we saw a number of similar edifices, none matching that of the boy's, but close enought to speculate that the Chinese have latent wall-building instincts.

We spent the rest of the afternoon looking for an internet cafe and wandering round the town. It being a weekend, the rabbit and guinea pig sellers were out in force, and many people walked by clutching tiny cages with smaller rodents nibbling paper. The internet we found was ridiculously slow and we concluded that maybe Xi'an is not the best place for keeping in contact with people.We had similar misfortune with bank machines - we've not been able to withdraw money from any machine for a week or so now, and we're very short of cash. I don't know if it's a problem with our credit cards (maybe the company has changed our permissions) or with the use of foreign cards in Chinese banks.

Back at the hotel, we asked where to find the internet cafe advertised on their website. They gave us directions to a place down the road. We were sure they had an internet cafe here, so we stopped at the fourth floor, which seems to be the place most things are going on, and asked there. A young man escorted us out of the hotel and all the way down the road, across six lanes of traffic, up some windy stairs and into an internet cafe. He asked the receptionist for a token for us, accompanied us to a vacant computer and waited while we tried to access our email. Onlyafter we'd been there for ten minutes did he finally leave, and we were free to do the same: we'd only wanted to know where the hotel's place was for future reference!

On the way back to the hotel again, we stopped to try to buy some satsumas from a young boy. He was reluctant to sell them, but a helpful passer-by convinced him. Then an old woman came out of an alleyway and demanded that we put them all back and go away, which we did. A little later, we tried again and were successful. The lengths I'll go to for my daily vitamin-C fix!

That was it, really. It was very cold in the room so I got into bed and ended up falling asleep too early.