Thursday - Beautiful Guilin City

We left Beijing this morning about 8:45 and took off from the airport about 12:15pm. We arrived at the Guilin area airport about 3:15pm. This place is much more rural and the airport is a lot smaller than Norfolk International. As the plane came in, Jerri noticed a group of about 15 children just outside the airport fence running up to see it land and taxi to the terminal. We met our guide, Wendy, and rode about 45 minutes from the airport to the town of Guilin itself. The roads in the city are very narrow and we worked our way around to the hotel, which is along Banyan Lake, one of four lakes in the city.

Wendy made reservations for us at a local place called the Left Bank Restaurant. She gave us directions to get there and said it was about a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. Make that fifteen minutes if you actually know where you’re going. Since we really had no point of reference for some of the landmarks she gave us, it took over 30 minutes to walk there. Jerri asked directions at a small refreshment stand and they pointed us in the same direction we were already going, so that was reassuring. After another block or two I called our guide, gave her the name of the hotel we were standing in front of (Guilin Lijiang Waterfall Hotel), and asked if we were close. She said we were about 100 feet from the street we needed to be on, and that the restaurant was about halfway up the street. Again, “halfway” only does any good if you know how far “all the way” is. Fortunately, the sign for the restaurant was clearly posted in English and Chinese. We managed to order dinner without too much trouble, although trying to figure out how “yang chao” fried rice differs from “Guilin-style” fried rice proved a little troublesome, so when our server said, “Guilin delicious” I just nodded and said, “OK.” We even managed to keep from ordering too much Chinese food. Mark your calendars, because that’s a first for us regardless of which hemisphere we’re in. By the way, Guilin-style fried rice IS delicious...a little spicier than the generic fried rice you get in the U.S. You’ll have to try it sometime.

The area around the restaurant is known as the Zheng Yang Walking Street. It is closed to traffic and has vendors and shops all along its length. Everything is lit up and most of that is flashing. It’s a very lively night market that ends at the river’s edge. We walked down along the river back toward our hotel. The only place I’ve ever been in the U.S. that compares is the River Walk in San Antonio, Texas, and this puts it to shame. There is so much going on and every building is so brightly lit it’s amazing to see. If you go to the Links page on our blog and click on the Guilin link, there are some pictures of the area. You’ll know you’re looking at the right spot when you see two very tall pagodas. We walked along the bank directly opposite the pagodas for a distance of about a half mile, which took us up a small feeder river to Banyan Lake. All along the way there were singers, vendors, pagodas, vacationers, and bright lights. Near the spot where we crossed the river to our hotel there were three groups of about 20-25 women dancing. They appeared to be just random people who showed up to dance together for the heck of it. Each group was dancing to a slightly different style of music. Several very small children were imitating the dancing, which was really cute.

The downtown Guilin area is really incredible. I like the Virginia Beach oceanfront, but it doesn’t come anywhere near the festive atmosphere here. I plan to get pictures on Friday evening to give you a better idea what we're seeing here.

Friday is our Li River cruise. I hope to get some great pictures of the limestone mountains (karst formations) all around us. They are truly remarkable.