The night train from Kunming got us to Dali very early in the morning.
Dali Old Town is about 15 km away from the new Dali, and at 6 am taking a taxi was our best option. Nobody speaks English, so explaining anything involves showing lot's of pictures on the phone. To make sure we end up where we need to be, every time we made lot's of print screens of every name, both n English and Chinese. It worked quite well.
When we got to our guest house it was still very early, so we decided to catch up on some sleep before going for a walk into town.
Just
around the corner from the guesthouse there is a whole street with all kind of
little places to eat.
We got our usual “breakfast” – noodles, at a place recommended by the guesthouse's reception guys. You get the base noodles and the rest you can add yourself.
Dali Old Town was about 10 minutes away walking, and the
surrounding streets were quite nice as well.
There
are two main streets in the old town, one going from the North gate to the
South and another from East to West.
We decided to walk first one, then the other. The part of the street from the intersection to the East gates is the oldest.
Little old wooden houses are now all converted into some kind of tourist shops, cafes, or workshops. Plenty of them!
It has lot's off street-food on offer, some very unusual.
People around are just busy with their every day things. We loved the fact that it's not a museum like in Kunming, where everything is staged, but a living town with it's own vibrant life.
All the way to the East Gates.
A cup of fantastic flower tea among this hustle is especially enjoyable.
Just as we were starting to walk to the other main street we found this most unusual catholic church we've ever seen. Even the churches here are very Chinese ;-))
Afterwards, we decided to walk to the South Gate, which was suppose to be an impressive one.
And it was! Huge crowds of Chinese tourist everywhere, taking non-stop selfies of themselves. :-)
By the way, there also plenty of water canals in the old town but they are all hidden underneath the streets and run at the side of the main roads.
In the afternoon, the old town started to get really crowded and hot.
We decided to escape the crowds by renting a motorbike and going to the lake, which was close by.
The roads here are quite empty and driving around on the motorbike is quite pleasurable.
On the way we so a monument to the communist China,...
... and an ancient China.
Before getting to the lake, we stopped at a small picturesque village for lunch. A very nice little old place with it's own unique history.
A monastery.
Every settlement, no matter how big or small, has it's own impressive gate.
We had to drive through the fields before getting to the lake.
And finally - the lake.
After the lake we turned back and by the time we got to Dali it was already dark. We decided to go for a walk in the old town one more time and find a place to eat.
The cheaper street food, this where the locals come for dinner and a chat with friends.
Intersection of the two main streets.
From here, all the way up to the East Gate is the restaurant street with every possible type of food to be found.
After walking around for at least an hour, we finally found an interesting place. And the meal of the day became this:
Here, Lena ordered LITTLE BIT spicy... A hint - both red and green peppers here are HOT CHILI!! Would you call this "a little spicy"??
After dinner we started to walk back to the guesthouse. Although it was quite late, the shops were still open.
Same was the night market.
We got back and called it a night, because we had to take a 6 am train to Lijiang the next morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment