Things that went bump in the night...

Easter Day, Sunday 8th April 2007

Having slept since 9pm the previous night, V woke up refreshed, while I had a slightly later night, catching up with the latest Premier League football live on TV then a virtuoso performance from a visiting ‘masseuse’ in the next bedroom...

We were up and about before long and heading for the ‘Western’ part of the city, much cleaner and clearly geared towards visitors. Here, we finally reached Starbucks and enjoyed a leisurely Easter breakfast, the first such since the start of Lent some 6 weeks previous!

From here we wandered back to the hotel to check out then board the bus to Chengdu. This bus journey was an uncomfortable 4 1/2 hours plus another 30 mins’ taxi ride at the other end. When we reached out hotel at around 5.30pm we were very pleased to find it clean and comfortable. After the usual quick wash & brush up we were off out to dinner. I went off with the majority of the group to sample the local speciality of Szichuan hotpot while V went with the group’s other veggies, Elise and Caroline, to see if they could find the pizza place trumpeted in the Lonely Planet Guide.

After another half hour’s walk and plenty more quizzical moments they reached their destinations and were most pleased with the outcome. Sadly this, or at least something, was to take its revenge later when V got back to the hotel, but not wanting to dwell too much on that, I’ll tell you a bit about the hotpot. The basic idea, so far as I can recall, is that you have two pots of hot, basically, soup, into which you put pretty much whatever’s available to cook. This included lots of different meats, veg, all kinds of things. Good to try but I don’t know I’d go mad for it again!

Then it was a leisurely roll back to the hotel after eating too much as usual to attend the patient...