Chengdu

 Chengdu  

After Beijing, I took the bullet train to get back to Chengdu. It travels on dedicated track for most of the way. It cruised at an average speed of 350 kpm. The countryside just whizzed past as we left the country's busiest station handling more than 50 million passengers a year, through the second most busiest station of Zhangzhou, handling 35 million passengers via Xian to our final destination and the end of the line at Chengdu, a 7.5 hour journey. 

We stopped in Xian but after here we never travelled faster than 250 kph tp reach Chengdu.

We reached Chengdu 15 minutes late due to having to wait for late running trains running in the opposite direction. 

I had been here before and most recently just a few days before. The weather was due to to be poor as in cool and raining but ideal for seeing pandas for which the city is famous. I had seen them before so I gave it a miss. 

I waked arond the city with my camera that was now working to see some of the sights. I had to stop at the bridge over the river. It is the same bridges that Marco Polo desceibed in his journals as he travelled along the Silk Road.  

This is not the original bridge but it is a replica. The original and several repalcements that have been built since have been washed away by floods. It is now an up market restaurant and is spectacularly lit up at night and well worth seeing twice, once during the day and once at night to see it brightly lit up. 

Nothing special is immediately obvious but this is my hotel. We were all located on the fifth floor. This floor also includes a roof top garden created where the pedestral segment of the building shrinks to the base of the central tower. 

It also houses two domed towers at either end. These created some unusual spaces internally and from the outside. It was a great opportunity for some quirky usage that had been missed by the current owners. The unusual space was furnished but it seemed that no one used it. It would have made some great high priced alterntive accomadation, a querky bar area or exercise area. It had just been missed as an opportunity and lay gathering dust.