Relaxing day of temples

12.09.2015

Since the car thing didn't work out, I didn't feel like traipsing around all day on buses for four hours again. I opted to stay all day in the city, visiting temples and doing nothing.

First breakfast, though. A Quebecois couple showed me the place "with some nice pastries". I was thinking they actually had found a European cafe, but it was only wonton soup with Chinese donuts. The woman asked for 3.5 yuan, when I pointed at the soup. She suddenly changed her mind and added a greasy donut into the deal. Now it was 4.5 yuan. Haha, OK lady. In the end, she was right, it was delicious, but look at me, do I really need more deep fried carbohydrates? Noooooo.

I went early in the morning to the oldest and largest temple first. Huayuan. It was polished and well kept. They described it as an ancient Chinese art gallery. Hmm. I had never thought of any temple that way, but it's true. It made me feel a little better about paying for all those entry tickets over the years. I was really just going to many many art galleries. As long as the relics were authentic, it made a lot more sense to me.

In the temple, there were all kinds of ancient clay carvings, as well as a pagoda with nice views of the city and the remains of a famous monk, encased in copper, in the baement.

I met a French tour group, so I talked with them for a while, before heading back to the hostel for more water and lotion for my parched skin. I laid down on the bed and couldn't get up for about two hours. Oh no.

I found a place on Trip Advisor for lunch, which seemed like a Shanxi noodle place. I followed the map, but unfortunately, it turned out to be a normal fast food chain. The people who had gone before hadn't bothered to read any of the signs, they just saw any noodle place and went in. Then, they put their pictures up on the internet and everything was wrong. It wasn't helping the indpendent businesses at all, it just funneled people to the fast food chain...When I saw the big red sign, I had to double check, and yep, that was the right place.

Figuring the "hole in the wall" noodle place had simply expanded since the review was writting, I got a bowl of soup and went in for my conveyor belt noodle experience. Unpleasant. While being yelled at in a foreign language is a daily occurrence for me, it didn't faze me. I did however, enjoy the noodles. They tasted "cleaner" and the soup was tastier and less greasy than these other places you see everywhere. Once again, I was a sideshow, people took photos with me and I left, onto the next temple.

First though, I stopped at the nine dragon screen, a huge tile wall that used to guard a palace over 500 years ago.

My last stop of the day was Shanhua temple. I wasn't very enthusiastic about this one, but there wasn't much else to do, so I went anyway. I thought that it was actually better than the first one. The clay sculptures were more lifelike and the stories that went with them were more interesting.

I found myself dozing off as I sat on the cool tiles of the main hall. Not many other people were visiting, so it was calm and serene. In addition, there was also a beautiful garden on the west side, where I snoozed away the rest of the afternoon.

Eventually, I went back to the hostel and then remembered I needed food for the train tomorrow. I ended up with 100 yuan worth of fruit and other snacks. How does that happen?!

I went to bed with yogurt and an orange for dinner, then woke up early for my 14 hour train ride home.

Breakfast