Friday morning a group of us decided to go cycling along the city wall - a total of 14km around Xi'an, after checking out. Everyone met up at 12 and Bobo showed us the way on the public bus to get there to pay - with student discount too waeyyyy! We were pretty surprised that there weren't more people up on the wall, but it did mean that we could cycle around like loonies and not knock any unsuspecting chinese tourists off their bikes. The road was pretty bumpy so we all ended up with numb bums by the end of it - more so was Kirsty and Paul who hired a tandem instead, which we all had a go on but none of us could get the hang of it! We realised that we couldn't cycle all of the way around the wall as they were doing some sort of repair work on one of the bridges, so we rode around as far as we could... then turned around and came back again, probably riding about 20km in an hour and 20 minutes, not bad! We befriended a puppy just sat by itself in one of the towers, it was really cute and Claire wanted to take it home... but the minute Alistair had a cuddle it pooed all over him hahaha!

After cycling we decided to rest our behinds and find some much needed lunch! We searched for a restaurant Bobo had recommended, which was pretty much empty - not a particularly good sign. We still haven't really got the hang of this ordering malarkey - we always seem to want far more than we can actually manage, but all 5 of us picked a dish and swapped and shared them with rice and noodles. Alistair and I inadvertently ordered 'spicy chicken' and 'pork with pepper' which actually equates to an ENTIRE BOWL of chillis with the tiniest scraps of meat hidden in there. Look at the pictures - the red one was Alistairs, and needless to say he ploughed through it.... and regretted it the next day! After food, us two went back to the Muslim quarter for a bit of souvenir shopping and bartering, which is always a laugh, then back to the hotel to meet up with the rest of the group to go to Xi'an station and get our next overnight train.

Bobo had told us this one wasn't as nice as the first one, and it was about 17 hours too, departing about 8pm. It was still the same style of 6-bunk cabins, but this time there weren't as many walls to shield you from the rest of the train (or a door, again) so we all felt quite exposed. We were in a cabin with Alistair, John, Sarah & Bobo, so we spent a few hours telling jokes and playing mass amounts of Rummy and Switch. On our way to Shanghai!