It's been a full day already, so I have to admit that I am *not* terribly excited about finding out that we have yet *another* stop today: "The Garden of the Wild Goose". We've been seeing signs around Xian - directing tourists to it, so I am fearful of a tacky tourist trap - and, anyway, we've seen gardens in Beijing so how good can this be? But. We're on the bus and they're driving, so off we go.
We drive through the bustle and traffic of the city of Xian and pull up to - well - a blank wall. My excitement drops another peg: I can't even *see* a garden - and how much of a garden can there be here in the middle of the city, anyway? We're told that there has been a misunderstanding: that the garden is usually open until 4:30PM, but, today, they closed early so even though we're "on time" it is closed. Frankly, I'm relieved. Let's just go back to the hotel and relax.
But, no! Odysseys comes thru again. Our local guide personally knows somebody who works in the Garden, so she gets on her cellphone and calls her friend - still inside.
And. Magically. The wall opens up into a gate. And the bus pulls through. And the wall closes behind us. And there is a whole "Central Park" stretched out ahead of us. It really is like some "bag of holding" in "Dungeons & Dragons": WHERE did all of THIS come from? - and we almost have the whole thing to ourselves - since it was officially already closed.
Wow.
My blood pressure drops 20 points again. We're in a quiet, beautiful little paradise and we slowly explore - not being hurried at all. Just take things at our own pace as we pass a 13-story-high temple
and just enjoy the luxury of *quiet* and trees and beauty - in the middle of a city. 
A rose garden in bloom 
with quirky little statues. 
Picturesque junk. 
We open out into another large square and it is actually nice to see ancient roofs which are *not* kept spotless. 
We all kind of congregate around a massive bell - which you can ring for a small fee
and the deep "goonnnng" is just what you would expect - and very satisfying.We split up again and find a Stone Pony which I suspect Bruce Springsteen never heard of. There are stone mounting blocks beside it, so I decide that it is OK to *ride* the pony and feel the joy of being a silly child while I do.
We seem to have gotten to the effective end of the park, so we slowly wend our way back toward the front, passing more "interesting things" on the way
take a good look. This is a carving. Find the face, then work your way out from there. It's just... *nice*.
We work our way back through the rose garden
and back out to the bus. 
What a great ending to the day.Back to the Sheraton and I try to burn some DVD's of the photos taken to this point - only to find that the old laptop I brought - just won't do the job. I suspect that it doesn't have enough RAM to handle the job of verifying the contents, but the bottom line is that I discover that I can't make back-up copies of the photos while we're in China. That's OK. We've got room on the SD cards.
So off to bed - and we've now finished day *5* of our 20 day tour.
Tomorrow we travel to a wheat farm / village outside of Xian - then fly to Shanghai!!!
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