Today we went to see Ciqikou (the porcelain village), situated on the bank of the Jialing river, some 15 km out of hongqing. The old village was turned into a cute tourist attraction with lots of Sichuanese style shops, selling more-of-the-same stuff you can find in other provincial towns and villages.
We then went to see the very impressive town hall in downtown Chongqing, which bares a very strong resemblance to the Temple Of Heaven in Beijing.
Later we went into the municipal museum, which held a couple of exhibitions about the building of the huge three gorges dam.
Afterwards, we made a fatal error and took a long walk (up the mountain...) to find a local shopping center. The walk literally killed us, and after some refreshments in a local Cafe we took a taxi back to the hotel for a rest.
Chongqing is a HUGE city, which was built on a mountain, regardless to its slopes. this meant that the town has dozens of bridges, tunnels, buildings built on the slopes with crazy angles etc.
One thing I have to say is that Chongqing taxi drivers are INSANE, and I mean it in a bad way. They drive as if they own the road, with no regard whatsoever to other cars on the road, not to mention their speeding-breaking-speeding issues.
Anyway, tomorrow we're off to the south, to our next destination which is Guangzhou.
More photos to come later on.
Take care and hugs from Chongqing. :)
22:00 update: We had a wonderful buffet dinner at the hotel's western restaurant. The chef actually approached us and recommended dishes to us. As he learnt that I was a vegetarian, he suggested to preper a special dish for me, which I gladly agreed to. It was great and Ami also got his special dish.
After dinner, we approached the chef to thank him for an awesome dinner, and he asked if we could say the same kind words to the hotel's manager, who was standing nearby. Of course we did, and the manager was thrilled to hear it and was also glad to hear we travel to Accor hotels all over China and that we think Sofitel Chongqing is one of the very best of them.
Half an hour later, when we were in our room, a fruit basket arrived - compliments of the hotel's manager and also an envelope with a personal invitation to a cocktail held by the hotel's general manager tomorrow night. We felt as if we were on "The love boat" and that we were invisited to captain Stubbing's dinner table. :))) Too bad tomorrow we're not here anymore.
Tomorrow we're off to Guangzhou. :)
G'night! :)