Chengdu: Home of the Panda!

Today was our first full day in Chengdu, and it was a great one!!

We got a slow start to the day since we were both really tired from our late flight the night before. But, eventually we made our plans and headed out.

Our first stop via taxi was the Chengdu Giant Panda Research and Breeding Center, which was soooo amazing. We got to see so many pandas and red pandas, and they were all so cute. The red pandas were definately my favorite and I totally would keep one as a pet if I could haha. We had read that there is a place where you can hold the pandas while getting your picture taken, but after looking around for some time, we couldn't find it and gave up. Oh well.

After that, we took a taxi back to our hotel and decided to go to Wuhou Temple. It's really hard to get a taxi around dinner time here for some reason, so I eventually convinced Katie to take a bicycle operated rickshaw with me. I flagged one down and hopped in, assuming we were in for a peaceful stroll through Chengdu. Boy was I wrong though! It was the most stressful and scary thing of our trip so far. I literally thought we were going to be hit by cars, buses, and motorcyles at least 5 times every minute!

Eventually we made it there, but it had already closed. However, there is this cool restored shopping district which was decorated in so many beautiful red lanterns called Jinli Lu. We walked around there, and it was super cool. We also had our first try at eating food from the street vendors! I had some rice cooked in a pineapple, which was delicious, and some spicy fried vegetables, which were so so.

After that, we walked down the street and ate at a hot pot restuarant. Chengdu is famous for its super spicy food, particularly the hot pot, so I was very anxious to try it. The menu was entirely in Chinese, so we basically had to order exclusively by pointing at food at other people's tables, and using our fingers to show how many we wanted. We said we wanted it only medium spicy, but it was by far the spiciest thing I have ever tasted!!! I could only even eat a little bit of it, though it was delicious. The best part is that the whole meal, including 3 huges bottles of beer, was only 84 Yuan or about 11 USD for both of us!!!

Chengdu is such a beautiful city, and there is such a good mix of old and new here. Shanghai is someplace that I could totally live in, but after only one day, Chengdu is someplace that I absolutely want to live in. There's just something really special about it that's impossible to put into words. I just really love it here.

Tonight is going to be an early night for us since we have a busy and early day tomorrow, with short trips to several temples and parks, and a long distance bus ride to Leshan to see the largest Buddha statue in the entire world! I hope it will be another great day!!