YUNNAN! - Dali

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Sorry about the delay...it was a busy week & I've also been a little under the weather.

OCT.3: I think I slept during most of the way to Dali...

When I woke up, I could hear some very bad singing (from people singing inside the KTV/karaoke places). hehe...Brad was driving us up this very old looking street and I was thinking...where are we staying tonight? But tucked away at the end of the road was our hotel. I think it was called Royal something hotel. 😊 The"wing" with all the hotel rooms was designed in a square shape or something and the main corridors were open to the outside--to a central courtyard. (From our room window, we could see into the courtyard and look across to another hotel room.) As I was walking to our hotel room I looked out into the courtyard because it seemd to be very brightly lit...and then I looked up and realized the light was coming from the full moon! It was beautiful!

We walked to the Old Town of Dali which was just a 10 minute walk away. I remember that the air smelled sweet (it literally smelled sweet...like fragrant flowers! It was such a nice change because Shanghai's air is quite polluted).
It was very pretty with all the lights and lanterns lit up at night. There were LOTS of people and lots of little shops and booths and restaurants and bars...We ate at one of the restaurants & I tried some Dali beer because I heard it was supposed to be very good. And it was pretty good!

We walked around the maze of streets & shops in the Old Town for a couple hours, but I didn't buy anything because my friend said that there would be lots of things to buy in Lijiang (and at a better price)!

The next morning, it was raining a bit...but we were still able to see the Three Pagodas. We snapped a few pictures and then we headed off to Lijiang (about a 4-hour drive north of Dali)...

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Photos

Old street
Down the street from our hotel...it looked ancient and deserted since all the stores were closed (except for the KTV places)

Hotel in Dali
see the set of blinds next to the bedside table (on the left)? it is so strange, but you can open the blinds and see into the bathroom--why would you want to do that? there was a similar design in our hotel in Lijiang...weird....

Hotel in Dali--bathroom
I thought the shower floor was cool...(it reminded me a wooden bed base that you can buy from IKEA).

puke
Puke for 10 RMB. ??????

Watch your step!
There were channels of water running along both sides of the streets...you had to step over them in order to get into a shop.

Chinese furniture
In the lobby area of the hotel waiting to be checked-out. There were also some interesting wooden carvings & sculptures around the hotel. There was a huge wooden sculpture by the elevator of some sort of turtle-dragon-lion beast.