We had a late checkout this morning and packed up and put our cases outside the door before heading down to breakfast at about 09:15. At 11:30 we left and headed out to lunch.

By this point the temperature outside was probably about 4C. We then went to the hutong district and hired rickshaws to take us on a tour. This tour was just fabulous. This area was one of the newer hutongs and we first went to the house of a wealthy man who had a very traditional home with four bedrooms and the whole house is constructed around a courtyard. This man had a surround sound system and plasma TV and his son lives in Canada. Next we went to a poorer man's house. His house is a part of a very large house, built in the same style i.e. having a central courtyard but it is very large and supports 8 families. Mr Jin and his wife are retired and he is an artist and calligrapher. His work was so beautiful that I was forced to buy a silk watercolour painting for Y150!

By this stage of the tour the temperature must have been about -2 and the windchill was about -15! Did I mention that it was cold! Even with the blankets over us in the rickshaw it was freezing. The rickshaw drivers were fantastic, though. They raced each other and laughed and joked the whole time and we all had a ball despite the cold.

After that tour we went back to the bus and off to the calligraphy market area where I bought a few items and then dad and I found the best little tea house/art house that you could ever with to find (see the photos).

We then went for dinner before heading to the Beijing West railway station which was, like everything else here, absolutely huge! We had to wait for about an hour before finally boarding and then had to walk for miles to our carriage which was close to the front of the train. The little compartments were very comfortable and very warm (too warm in fact). There was a real party feel as we were all in the same section of the one carriage and everybody flitted amongst each other's rooms. Quite a few had brought along bottles of wine and beer and we all had a great time until bed. Sleep was very disturbed but ok. We arrived into Xi'an around 8:15am and had to walk for around 15 minutes to our bus.

Catch you later.