Lijiang, Yunnan, China

I arrived in the morning in Lijiang from Dali on the train. I met Arianna and her friend at our hostel, we freshened up a bit and were on our way.
We were staying just outside the old city, so we bought our ticket and headed in to explore.

One of our first realizations was that we needed coffee. We found this really cool cafe, which had an amazing view over the rooftops of the old city. We sat on their patio in the warm sun and drank coffee, which was grown in Yunnan province!

We then headed up to Lion Rock, which is a big hill in the city. They have a rather inhumanely small enclosure of peacocks there, which I found really surprising (not the animal cruelty, that wasn't surprising).

It was really an old tower, with some art on sale. I got some nice pictures in the park, though.

After that, we continued to wander through the beautiful streets for the rest of the afternoon.

Finally, we ended up leaving the city to visit the most famous view in Lijiang. It looks like a postcard or a painting. The pictures don't look real - it's so beautiful. We stayed there for quite a while admiring this view.

We went back through the city and made our way slowly back to our hostel.

This was one of my favorite pictures - this woman was unloading tulips onto the street to be planted in the planters.

The next morning, we got up and headed out of town. The bus to Jade Dragon Snow Mountain Park turned out not to really be a public bus rather than an established ride sharing system. After quite a bit of negotiation with our driver (who, of course, spoke absolutely no English), we got a very reasonable deal. We paid about 50 RMB there and back to the park - in a private car!

We arrived in the park and were dropped off at this valley - Blue Moon Lake Valley - or something like that. We were absolutely stunned by how beautiful it was! So we spent several hours walking down and then back up the valley.

It was kind of a sad realization that this whole valley of cascading pools and lakes is completely constructed. All the waterfalls are made of concrete if you look closely. Never put it past China to make something. Nothing is real in China.

Nevertheless the valley was beautiful and the water was so blue! And we made a friend - this confused cow, who found itself surrounded by tourists.

They had a yak casually standing by drinking water - of course, for pictures.

We still had a few hours, so we took the cable car up the mountain and found this field with these huge mountains in the background. While we were walking around, these two horses just come galloping into the field in front of us. I was taking pictures the whole time because it was so picturesque. Then this happened. The two horses look like they're kissing. Also, this was the day before Valentine's Day. How romantic!

We headed back down to the valley and then back to Lijiang.

We had a beer in a cool cafe in the old town.

This was the end of our short time in Lijiang. That night, we took the overnight train back to Kunming. I really like Lijiang. It's amazingly beautiful and quaint. I think, though, it lacks the character of Dali. I would probably recommend Dali over Lijiang, but if you can go to both, do that. They are a cute couple of towns!