Day 31 - a whole month since I left home!
Chengdu was a wonderful city. We loved being there, despite Bea losing her phone and us having to switch from another excruciatingly un-heated hostel to a regular hotel. It wasn't much more per night, and we had our own hot water, and HEAT. We were learning. We started only booking places for one night - then, if we liked it, we would extend our reservation. And if we didn't, well!
Chengdu had a great vibe to it - new but not too new, lots of green spaces, and sometimes these rickety old buses converted from tram cars....
Chengdu is also home to a famous set of crisscrossing alleyways. Kuanzhaixiangzi translates to "wide and narrow alleys". It was an old hutong (traditional residential section of a city), and has been renovated and updated to be a pedestrian only outdoor mall of sorts. There were street vendors, stores, restaurants, jewelry stores, crystal sculpture stores, bars, nightclubs, art museums, and of course a million lanterns, red ribbons, and lights everywhere. We didn't buy anything, but we sure enjoyed looking around! On the way home, we found a open grocery and bought a pomelo and some bread for the next day's breakfast. Pomelo's were our favourite on this trip.
One of the street vendors made candy. Blown candy. It looked like he was making glass figurines, but they were edible. COOL. (don't take that literally, let those things cool off before trying to eat them)
No comments:
Post a Comment