Christmas Shopping

We were staying in a 4 star hotel, and we wanted to make use of the hotel room more than usual. It was still chuffing cold outside and as Christmas was approaching we decided that we would have a more relaxed day than normal and try to order a few bits and bobs online to get delivered at home in time for Christmas. So we spent a relaxed morning surfing through Amazon and such sites trying to get some inspiration for Christmas presents for our friends and family.

Obviously we needed food, so we left the warmth and comfort of the hotel and went down to the south gate to find one of the markets that our friend Haven had told us about. It was down Calligraphy Street, and it seemed so-called as there were so may brushes and parchments for sale it was untrue. We managed to do a little bit of wheeler-dealering  down there before grabbing some well-earned fodder.

We had visited the main market street on our first day in Xi’An but hadn’t really bought much as we wanted to get a feel for the place first. Now it was our last day in China we needed to up our game a little as I had a long list of things I wanted to get people and only an afternoon to achieve it. We had our fair share of good and bad sellers down there, to the point whereby we walked away in disgust at some of the prices, and to the point where we nearly got spat on and chucked out of the shop when we entered our low opening offer. But we had great success and got pretty much exactly what we wanted and headed back to the hotel with a smile on our face to out the kettle on and warm up again.

Hmmmmm, I just don't understand....

The afternoon was spent checking through all details for our trip to Kathmandu on the following day and packing all our stuff, for we would be setting the alarm for 4:00am to make sure we would get to the airport in plenty of time. We revisited the Japanese place across the road and James still had trouble asking the staff for a fork, and ended up having to shovel the rice and beef dish down with a hefty spoon. We watched the final episode of Catterick (which I implore you to watch) and settled in for a few hours of sleep before the alarm would be bleeping us into consciousness from across the room.