Sulongyuan Hotel Luoyang

... a few months came back to haunt me the next morning, as parts of my legs were so incredibly stiff. Naturally, as it is quite hard work to climb three flights of stairs, the best thing to do is to climb a mountain.
Yesterday, as the snow was just starting to come down, we had a foray into the mountains nearby (even colder, unsurprisingly) to go to the Shaolin monastery, primarily to see some kung fu action. Whilst, at times, you may feel as though you are smacking your ...

... for about 20 mins. Lucy went for a shower and got given out to through the door for turning the tap the wrong way or something? All in all he was way too involved that morning for our liking! His son walked us to the bus stop and he gave us good instructions of how to get to the Longmen Caves.

The buses turned into a small disaster as we got on the second bus going the wrong way and ended up spending about an extra hour than was necessary ...

... these amazing grottoes with their huge statues straight out of the rock so long ago, and with such rudimentary tools, is awe inspiring.
Later, we went on a 'dragon boat' on the River Yi, and got a wonderful view of the grottoes.
The White Horse Temple was built in the 13th century during the Ming Dynasty at the time of the spread of Buddhism, although the original structures have now been more or less completely ...

... trip on the lake; Some more silk shopping [!]; visit to the Temple of Heaven; Peking Duck dinner; then to the station for the overnight journey to Luoyang.

11th October:

We checked into the excellent Peony Hotel on the 21st floor; freshened up, then drove 2 ...

... we went to the Longmen Grottoes( 龍門石窟 ). It is on a big mountain and we walked **********g the mountain was the Yi River(one of the branches of the Yellow River), which reminded me a poem by Caozhi( 曹植 ) in the Southern and Northern Dynasties 1500 years ago. He mentioned this river in his poem that tells how hard the road he went back to his home was, and there was no bridge ...

From Xian, we made our way by bus to Luoyang, where we visited the nearby Longman caves. The caves house about 100 000 Buddha sculptures, big and small. Most were housed in little carved doorways and every now and then a deeper cave. On the whole, the area looked like a giant hive ...

... after half an hour we were on the bus to Hongjiang, where we spent the night. In Hongjiang we visited the old town in the morning and then continued to Huaihua. Here we changed buses to Jishou. This bus ride took longer than expected and we arrived just before 8 o'clock in the evening in Jishou. My guidebook said that there were no buses anymore to Dehang after 7 o'clock, but we decided to ignore the guidebook and check anyway and we were lucky to catch the last bus to Dehang. Here we ...

... get away from those. We missed our exit and reversed about 1/2 mile on the highway and then switched buses for the last hour of our trip....but you know with 80 other people who are like family now... it was fun and you gotta love all these four and five star hotels that we are staying at :)

... it the main structure, a small altar in the side and a stimulating smell of incense. Their walls are decorating in traditional Chinese decorations in all rainbow colours, when blue, red and light green are the most dominants. The roofs are painted in red. However, Chinese people who come to a temple are absolutely amazed again and again, even if they visited three similar temples in the past three hours... We passed throught 3 temples between 7:30, when we ...

... of rock carvings of buddha. In creating this site, they also tried to answer the age old question - are 10,000 mini buddhas better than 1 ridiculously large buddha? Well, it seems they were unable to answer the question, so they did both. Buddhas. Everywhere. Brilliant. The grottoes? Memorable indeed. But just as memorable is this random pub that I went to in Luoyang. Firstly, Lionel Richie comes on. Say you Say me. Random. Brilliant. Vaguely nostalgic ...