Sunday, July 17, 2016
Tour day 10 of 15. Guilin with Vincent. Breakfast buffet at Sheraton Guilin. Highlights include gimlin rice noodle soup, various kinds of dim sum including ones decorated to resemble pigs, and a tree of western, frosted donuts. Rode in the bus 2.5 hours across the mountains. We alighted, then boarded a very well air-conditioned shuttle bus and rode another 40 minutes to reach the base of the climb to visit the Ping An Terrace Fields. We hired two men to carry Dad the entire climb up and down in a comfortable bamboo chariot. About two-thirds of the way to the top we lunched at Ping An Guest House. The highlights of the lunch were that the meal was entirely organic and also that we had one dish called bamboo rice, which was sticky rice with vegetables cooked in a bamboo tube over fire. The weather was very good—warm but not too hot, and fully overcast, providing beautifully diffused lighting for our many photos. There was a chance of rain all day, and although we encountered some rain while driving to and from we did not get wet on our strenuous hike. At the end of our hike the Health app on my iPhone 6 Plus said I climbed 62 floors, or approximately 620 feet. A long drive back to the city. We returned to Left Bank Restaurant for dinner, which included pumpkin soup, deep-fried eggplant, and lemon chicken. Afterwards we were on our own. We got soft-serve ice cream then split up to explore the shops along Zhengyang Pedestrian Street and Renmin Road. I visited Cabeen Lifestyle, KIKC, got soft-serve ice cream again, then returned to the hotel to pack. On television Jeremy found Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with dialogue in Mandarin, which we watched and I thoroughly enjoyed. To bed. Weather in the evening felt like 90 degrees Fahrenheit, very humid, and mostly cloudy. Number of steps walked = 14,991.