16 November 2014 –
Good morning! We got to sleep in this morning- wow! What a luxury!
We discovered at the breakfast bar that you can order foods, such as won ton soup. Yummy!!!!
The pandas we saw yesterday were the real reason we came to Chengdu. However, we do know there are other things to see here. The front desk helpers at our hotel gave us suggestions on what we could see today and we've narrowed it down to two locations: Jinli (walking street lined with shops) and Wenshu Yuan Monastery (which is only a five minute walk away from here).
We took a taxi to Jinli (short cab ride through a Chinese city that looks similar to the many Chinese cities we've seen). Jinli is next to a temple (it costs 60RMB per person to get in…at the moment I don't think I'm for viewing it). However, check out these interesting looking walking area with shops and restaurants:
Jinli:
Check out this most awesome Starbucks sign….it's a gong! (okay, it's not really a gong but it LOOKS like one).
This shopping area resembles more of a maze- long winding walkways with lots of side alleys shooting off the main trunk.
Anybody in need of a Camera Batter??? Funny on how ONE letter can change the meaning!
Candied fruits on sticks (we've seen these treats all throughout our travels in China):
Pearls…those are some honking big oysters:
I love the red banners and the lanterns. So lively and festive looking:
The couple dressed in red were followed by loads of people…They even said a cheerful hello to us as they passed us by. My guess? It's their wedding. (we saw them at other points along our walk). We wish this couple a long and happy marriage!
Silk worms and silk production (there was no information with these but you can see the silk worm cocoons):
Another silver jewelry shop. Oh. My. Goodness. Checkout the interesting head gear on one of the sales associates!:
Not only did this shopping area have water ways and bridges (reminiscent of Lijiang) it also was home to numerous fun sculptures, such as these fun snail sculptures:
This photo makes me happy – that Chinese lady is obviously having fun posing by sitting on top of a SNAIL for a photo….Hahahaha! Cracks me up!
And here's another sculpture: a hand holding a teapot:
My guess is that the red fabric medallions are hung by individuals wishing for luck or prosperity in their lives. Am I right? Am I close?
The trees were covered with these red fabric medallions:
This looks like a little shrine of sorts:
Red fabric hanging from a nearby tree:
Whatever these red fabric medallions are they are bright and colorful!
This gentleman creates fine, precise paintings inside bottles (very tedious process). I bought one little glass bobble with a panda painted on it (well, painted on the inside of the bobble) and I asked if he could write "Chengdu" on the inside. I'm not sure if I communicated my wishes correctly but he started writing something using his special devices and technique. Now I wished I'd bought more of these (or bigger bobbles):
I saw a drink for sale – it looked like it had pears and Chinese red dates in it. I just had to try it! It's a hot drink and it has a lovely caramely, smoky taste:
The girls are asking ice cream. Check out this place…the sell New Zealand ice cream. There's even hokey pokey flavor!!!:
We've wandering the streets enough and we're not going to check out the temple. Instead we're heading back to the hotel in a taxi (we'll see the monastery next):
Outside the monastery I spotted this bike full of flowers for sale. Beautiful!:
There is no entrance fee to the monastery (nice for a change!).
Check out this stack of unused chairs piled up against this building. Wonder what their story is:
Walking around the serene grounds of the monastery:
The Monastery:
Our goofy Ava. She's determined to do silly poses in response to us reminding both the girls of Annika's silly hand poses when we traveled to Austria when she was little.
Lighting candles….
There were lots of places were you could light incense sticks and place them in a special trough to burn. Some parts of the monastery were quite smoky!
I felt a little conspicuous taking photos of people inside the monastery – so I didn't. It just felt wrong.
Additionally, as a side note, I'd read about a tea house located inside the monastery grounds. We walked all over, back and forth, but we could NOT find that tea house! Grrrr… My leg is tired and very sore.
We saw lots of monks in gray robes walking around the shopping area close to our hotel. I felt odd about taking their photo but I did manage to snap a photo with monk examining goods for sale on a bike:
It's that turtle on a leash!
I'm not sure what this roadside snack is called but whatever it is – it's GOOD! We called it a taco but it's not. It's more of a pancake that she fills with your request. We tried ones filled with sweetened whipped cream or chocolate cream (oh, how divine!). We also tried savory fillings. Yum!
Views from our balcony:
We have to check out from the hotel by 2pm today – and it's time to gather up our belongings. We have to head to the airport at 4pm.
Check out this funny informational sign regarding hair dryer usage in the bathroom. I'm not sure about you but I'm fairly certain that I would NEVER use anything while IN the toilet. LOL!
We are all checked out and we've got a little bit of time to kill before we need to leave. Let's walk around outside on the streets:
Okay. That was amusing. We're tired of walking the same paths over and over again. Why don't we chill out with cups of tea in the hotel's tea room?
We asked the waitress for a recommendation for tea and she suggested something called Snow Tea. Very nice- it's a jasmine tea with pretty white blossoms floating in it:
It's time to head to the airport. The hotel prearranged a taxi for us. We're flying on Sichuan Airlines this time. Back home! Tomorrow it's back to the same old routines. At least this past weekend we got a break from our usual routine.