Huangshan

We experienced our first overnight train journey to Huangshan, which was rather luxurious as we ended up having a cabin to ourselves! We arrived in Tunxi in the morning and were met by our guide who took us to our hotel where we chilled out for a couple of hours before meeting her again to be taken around the town. She showed us the the old streets of the Tunxi District which were full of stalls targeting tourists like ourselves, and recommended some street food to sample! We then had the rest of the day to ourselves so true to form, we visited the gardens, where we were photographed, filmed and generally stared at by Chinese people. A particular group of girls followed us around, making a film of us and then finally made us pose for a picture whilst they all crowded round- crazy!! (Amy finally scared them off by getting her camera out and taking a photo of them- they didn't like that!) We then braved an internet cafe, managing (just about) to communicate that we wanted to use the internet for an hour! We had a bit of trouble with facebook which was all in Chinese. (We felt very sad when we realised that we could remember which buttons were which...)

The next day, we woke up hoping that we would be offered a continental alternative for breaky but...we were presented with dumplings and noodles- lovely but not for breakfast...just no. We took the bubble up the mountain which gave us our first spectacular views of Huangshan Mountain. We walked around the peaks, climbing up and down about a million steps! Our legs killed the next day! We were very lucky with the weather- clear blue skies both days. In the evening we walked up a peak near our hotel to catch the sunset which was beautiful.

In the morning, we went down to breakfast (after attempting to get up early for the sunrise and going back to bed when we realised our window wasn't facing due east as we thought) with some trepidation. We were led away from the buffet of delicious fruit and presented with shredded liver, frozen egg, watery rice, salty cucumber and possibly pickled cabbage. Not the best start. Luckily they then brought us some dumplings and sticky rice and beans wrapped in leaves so we were all set for the day... Back to the room for some supplimentary raisins and oreos.
We tackled two major peaks, including Lotus peak which I (Amy) would rather not repeat (it was v.steep and Chinese people tried to push you off the cliff). They didn't really (George). Ignore her- the next worse bit was going up a very steep narrow flight of steps through a crack in the cliff, and then realising I had left my gloves on Lotus peak. I didn't go back for them! Anyway, the views were awesome.
Back in Tunxi we spent a few more hours with Nicky our guide, and had a delicious meal of dumplings in soup (although George overdosed on the extra chilli...). We got on another overnight train back to Shanghai.
13hrs later, we arrived, only to get lost coming out of the station. We had a lovely meal with Dave and Angela. It felt as though we were only there a few minutes before we had to turn around again and get on ANOTHER overnight train, this time to Xian.