Traveling South
Today was another of our travel days - we reluctantly left Dunhuang, said goodbye to the Gobi Desert, and flew off toward the south of China. Our flight out of Dunhuang left a little after noon, so we slept in, and fixed our clogged sink...Tim is a regular McGuyver - our sink was so clogged with sand from our socks, he used a safety pin to unclog the stuck drain plug.Our taxi driver took a "through the desert" approach to avoid the tollway to the Dunhuang airport - literally driving on the wrong side of the road for a while and through a garbage dump to get there! Woohoo!!
Our flights to Lanzhou and Chengdu were uneventful. However, when we reached Chengdu, we had a most jubilant gate area for our Lijiang flight. What we didn't realize is that Lijiang (our final destination for the day -
and our stopping point for the next few days) is like the Florida of China - all the Chinese go on vacation here. In the waiting area before the Lijiang flight boarded, people were playing cards, laughing, and obviously enjoying their vacation. It felt very good to not be the only tourists on the flight!We took the CAAC bus into town from the Lijiang airport and then a taxi to the edge of Old Town. Lijiang has two parts - the new town (which is pretty much just like any other Chinese city) and the Old Town which is a UNESCO World Heritage site - it has charming, narrow alleys, canals, and ancient buildings. The charm of Old Town is that it is a total pedestrian zone - no cars, and thousands of Chinese tourists with their cameras and camcorders. It's so much fun to people watch here - if Lijiang is like Florida, this part of town is like Orlando. Not that it's annoying - it's beautiful and charming and in the shadow of some amazing mountains!
We ended the night with a late search for a hotel - finally ending up at the Red Lantern Inn in the Old Town - in a room with french doors and hardwood floors. The view from our room is out over the old alleys of Old Town.