Thursday, January 1, 2009

Chengdu I

We meet up in Chengdu with the Walters family: David, Laurel, Tim and Tanner. Marianne and Luci were also there, having arrived from touring Beijing and Xi'an with the Walters after they left us. It is so lovely to see friends and share adventures in China together. We stayed on a lively street, Jin Li, and this restaurant was just doors down from our courtyard hotel - a Starbucks separating the two!Storey on Jinli street where there are vendors galore. She found a confectioner who shaped sugar into animals, but after watching him make it, pretty grubby hands and lots of blowing onto the animal with drizzles errupting from his mouth, she wisely decided it was not the eating sort of sugar.
The kids spent whatever free time they had in this courtyard playing games. It was an open courtyard, meaning FREEZING cold, but it didn't seem to phase them in the least. So happy to be together. Our rooms were on either side of the courtyard. Very chilly in Chengdu. We have definitely left the sunny, clear days of Shanghai behind us.
Our breakfast, delivered to our room everymorning: a double steamer basket with a hard boiled egg and a small box of milk in the top and a piece of corn and a sweet potatoe in the bottom. There was also a daily run next door to the Starbucks!
The front of our hotel (the courtyard is behind the red doors) as we take off on our first Chengdu adventure. Off to the countryside in a lovely huge bus for 20. It is cold, cold, cold here, and very little visibility so far.

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