China: Day 18

Got up early this morning and took advantage of a free buffet breakfast which was provided by the hotel. The food was good so we ate a lot, as we were planning to be out for a while today.

After breakfast, we went directly to the Jiashan Xitang Ancient Town Scenic Area. We had a bit of trouble collecting the tickets, where the people selling them and the people checking the tickets at the gate had quite different ideas of what we needed to do to gain entry into the theme park. Eventually sorted it out (both sides were wrong, somehow).

We spent the next couple of hours wandering around through the various alleyways, shops, and bridges which litter the rivers throughout theme park. There was an interesting atmosphere in there, like everything was a little bit surreal - and far more commercialized than we were expecting. The scenery, however, was quite pretty to look at.

There were a number of smaller attractions inside the park which were included in the cost of the ticket, so we took at look at most of those along the way.

Ate a simple lunch on wontons at a small restaurant inside of the park.

Afterwards, we continued trying to find all of the exhibits which interested us (sometimes easier said than done!).

As time went on, the park become more crowded - so once we felt we had seen most of the things interested us, we headed back to the hotel.

Watched a couple of movies in the hotel, then headed out for dinner at the same nearby restaurant as the night before. Once again, the food was quite good. After eating we returned to the theme park for a quick walk around the pond, and then went back to the hotel for the night.