Old Town Dark Windows
Here it was, finally. The last full day of my second nine-day vacation in less than a month. I have to say, spring 2015 was awfully kind to me. Sunday morning found me boarding the huge passenger ferry on Weizhou Island after what was probably the best day of this trip. The ride back was perfectly uneventful, and we were treated to the same tourist video of Weizhou Island and Beihai that we’d seen coming over (or one awfully similar).
I really didn’t have too many plans for Beihai. One of the more famous sites is supposed to be Silver Beach which, according to every website (tripadvisor, etc.) that I could find is one that the Chinese advertised as “the best beach in the whole universe!,” and most people seemed to comment that, it wasn’t quite that good. Not bad, but not great. So, unless there looked like there would be an amazing sunset, I had no plans whatsoever to go there. (Since the sky wasn’t looking particularly cooperative, I made the easy call of not going the few kilometers out of town to hit this beach.)
I got back to the hotel near downtown sometime around noon and checked in. I stayed in the same place I’d slept Friday. Black Pearl Hotel or something along those lines. Unlike Friday night, when I didn’t get checked in until 10:00 at night and had no time to see anything in Beihai, I would at least have an afternoon and evening this time around. (Friday night in Beihai wasn’t pleasant at all; I had a hard time finding an open restaurant and met some of the rudest people I’ve come across outside of Shanghai. When I did find a restaurant, though, those folks were perfectly hospitable with me.)
This particular Sunday, I had (a mediocre) lunch in the hotel restaurant, where I managed to lose my room key…which I would eventually find about thirty minutes after leaving. (It took me about that long to explain to people in Chinese that I couldn’t find it and where I thought I’d lost it. I eventually found it on my own back at the restaurant.)
Since there wasn’t much that I was interested in seeing or doing in Beihai, I relaxed for the afternoon and went out around 4:00 to head to Old Town. This is basically one street that looked…somewhat interesting. Old Town is where Beihai’s older residents live. It’s a collection of restored 19th century buildings, in Chinese arcade style, with a few of note: a former post office, the Maruichi Pharmacy (which has its own history that involved potential espionage for the Japanese during World War II), the Shengping Jie Archway, and a handful of restaurants.
I didn’t have terribly high photographic expectations here, but not terrible enough that I didn’t want to shoot. The sky wasn’t being particularly cooperative in my opinion…threatening rain. However, I managed to get a few shots that were interesting enough for me (presented here, obviously) and I had an absolutely wonderful dinner at a Thai restaurant called Nirvana. The environment of the restaurant was quite nice, as was the food. I had spring rolls, a mango chicken dish, and another mango smoothie (but the smoothie was nowhere near as good as the one I’d gotten on Weizhou Island on Saturday evening).
After strolling up and down the street (up while it was still light, and back after it had gotten a bit dark), I called an unofficial end to the holiday and retired to the hotel.
Monday morning, I had a bullet train to take me back to Nanning, with a 7:00 p.m. flight back to Chengdu. That would give me a day in Nanning. I had spent time online researching tourist attractions, parks, museums, anything interesting in Nanning that I could see on a Monday. I also tried to find some good restaurant reviews (I ended up choosing an Indian restaurant) for places to eat. If you haven’t read the previous days’ summaries, I’ll remind everyone what all I loved about Nanning here: …(keep waiting…). Ok. There you have it. Like Lanzhou three weeks before, I spent hours upon hours waiting in the airport for my flight back home, which was completely uneventful, and I was glad to have my second spring vacation done. The next major vacation would be a little farther off, in late September…for two weeks in India. Stay tuned…
Old Town Dark Windows
Here it was, finally. The last full day of my second nine-day vacation in less than a month. I have to say, spring 2015 was awfully kind to me. Sunday morning found me boarding the huge passenger ferry on Weizhou Island after what was probably the best day of this trip. The ride back was perfectly uneventful, and we were treated to the same tourist video of Weizhou Island and Beihai that we’d seen coming over (or one awfully similar).
I really didn’t have too many plans for Beihai. One of the more famous sites is supposed to be Silver Beach which, according to every website (tripadvisor, etc.) that I could find is one that the Chinese advertised as “the best beach in the whole universe!,” and most people seemed to comment that, it wasn’t quite that good. Not bad, but not great. So, unless there looked like there would be an amazing sunset, I had no plans whatsoever to go there. (Since the sky wasn’t looking particularly cooperative, I made the easy call of not going the few kilometers out of town to hit this beach.)
I got back to the hotel near downtown sometime around noon and checked in. I stayed in the same place I’d slept Friday. Black Pearl Hotel or something along those lines. Unlike Friday night, when I didn’t get checked in until 10:00 at night and had no time to see anything in Beihai, I would at least have an afternoon and evening this time around. (Friday night in Beihai wasn’t pleasant at all; I had a hard time finding an open restaurant and met some of the rudest people I’ve come across outside of Shanghai. When I did find a restaurant, though, those folks were perfectly hospitable with me.)
This particular Sunday, I had (a mediocre) lunch in the hotel restaurant, where I managed to lose my room key…which I would eventually find about thirty minutes after leaving. (It took me about that long to explain to people in Chinese that I couldn’t find it and where I thought I’d lost it. I eventually found it on my own back at the restaurant.)
Since there wasn’t much that I was interested in seeing or doing in Beihai, I relaxed for the afternoon and went out around 4:00 to head to Old Town. This is basically one street that looked…somewhat interesting. Old Town is where Beihai’s older residents live. It’s a collection of restored 19th century buildings, in Chinese arcade style, with a few of note: a former post office, the Maruichi Pharmacy (which has its own history that involved potential espionage for the Japanese during World War II), the Shengping Jie Archway, and a handful of restaurants.
I didn’t have terribly high photographic expectations here, but not terrible enough that I didn’t want to shoot. The sky wasn’t being particularly cooperative in my opinion…threatening rain. However, I managed to get a few shots that were interesting enough for me (presented here, obviously) and I had an absolutely wonderful dinner at a Thai restaurant called Nirvana. The environment of the restaurant was quite nice, as was the food. I had spring rolls, a mango chicken dish, and another mango smoothie (but the smoothie was nowhere near as good as the one I’d gotten on Weizhou Island on Saturday evening).
After strolling up and down the street (up while it was still light, and back after it had gotten a bit dark), I called an unofficial end to the holiday and retired to the hotel.
Monday morning, I had a bullet train to take me back to Nanning, with a 7:00 p.m. flight back to Chengdu. That would give me a day in Nanning. I had spent time online researching tourist attractions, parks, museums, anything interesting in Nanning that I could see on a Monday. I also tried to find some good restaurant reviews (I ended up choosing an Indian restaurant) for places to eat. If you haven’t read the previous days’ summaries, I’ll remind everyone what all I loved about Nanning here: …(keep waiting…). Ok. There you have it. Like Lanzhou three weeks before, I spent hours upon hours waiting in the airport for my flight back home, which was completely uneventful, and I was glad to have my second spring vacation done. The next major vacation would be a little farther off, in late September…for two weeks in India. Stay tuned…