December 19th - Chengdu, a new hotel and a full day.
The first and last morning at our fancy hotel had a personally made breakfast by one of our hosts, complete with friendly dog.
They also had an interesting light, which we gave a nickname.
While leaving the community our hotel is in, you can see the gates at the entrance to the community here. Obviously, this means everyone going in and out of the communities can be checked if need be.
So we figured out how to order a Taxi with our foreign phones. Observe, the Chengdu "logo" on the hood.
En route to our hotel I was able to snap one picture which happens to, in the distance, shows the plants growing on one of the larger buildings.
Our new hotel would be right off of Chunxi Road. This street has a ton of night life in Chengdu, so we would be able to quickly wake up and jump right into the action.
However, before we get there we have to address this. Who puts a bicyle on the third floor balcony?
Since we already had breakfast, we didn't go right to Chunxi Road. Instead, we went somewhere else nearby - the Kuanzhai Xiangzi Alleys.
Mainly a tourist location, the shops in the alleys all have very fancy store fronts, designed to look much older, like:
We resumed our exploration around the alleys.
We eventually found a small shop selling Guokui (锅盔). Their QR code to scan, for payment, is laser etched wood!
The Guokui (锅盔) was not as good as I had hoped (later I would figure out this was just due to this particular restaurant).
We made our way back to the restaurant with the dragon in the door.
If you don't know about Hot Pot, you are given raw meat and a bowl of spicy boiling water. The water is continuously boiled at your table, and the resulting meat is very tender with a lot of flavor.
The spice, and steam, is a great match for Chengdu. If you're upset in Chengdu, have some hot pot. It'll be impossible to stay mad.
Next we would go to the Chengdu Wu Hou Shrine.
We proceeded by attempting to take a picture of falling leaves, by throwing the leaves in front of the camera...
At the Shrine is a small museum with replicas of items from the shrine.
After this, the goal was to see the tourists areas a night. To buy some time, we went to get foot massages.
So let's talk about the massage. We got our second (and last) Nanjing-style massage. There was some confusion to actually get to the massage studio as it was not on the ground floor, and the elevator buttons were on a pedestal in the middle of the room and not on the wall.
The massage was excellent - not to mention how they were able to crack my lower back. Since this was now my second Nanjing massage I asked them to not do the things I found painful with my legs - I'm not sure why people enjoy that...
So after the massage, to Jinli Street we went.
Jinli Street is pretty much just for tourists.
We found an alley of love-locks and decided to add our own.
For increased romance, nearby you can get your ears cleaned in public.
So that's it for Jinli Street. We found our way back to our hotel...
Near our hotel were lots of restaurants, and one of them was Chuan Chuan (pronounced "tren-tren").
