Yangshuo

October 11th - After a good night's sleep (at least as good as you can get on a train), we arrived in Guilin around 7:30am. We were about an hour later than we were scheduled to arrive. When we exited the train station, it was a little chaotic and we were looking for a taxi. All of a sudden, a guy with "Michael" on a sign approaches us and says he is our driver. We didn't realize it, but the hotel had sent a driver to pick us up. This was definitely a welcome bonus. What was really helpful, was that he spoke decent English and so was able to help us find the ticket office and book our return train ticket back to Hong Kong. After purchasing our ticket, we loaded up for the drive to the hotel. Our hotel is in Yangshuo, which is about an hour from the train station in Guilin. It was an easy drive with a lot of beautiful scenery on the way. We arrived at the hotel and were immediately impressed. We are staying at the Yangshuo Mountain Retreat. It is outside the town and set right on the Yulong He river. It is beautiful and peaceful. We were greeted at the front desk and offered some fresh juice. We found a bamboo picnic table outside overlooking the river and sat down. They brought us fresh squeezed orange juice and a breakfast menu. We were glad to see the menu because it had been a long time since McDonald's the night before and we were hungry. We were excited to see both the items and the prices. They had great breakfast choices for very cheap. So we all ordered breakfast and continued to enjoy the beautiful scenery. After eating all our breakfast, they came to let us know that our rooms were ready. We had figured since it was still only about 10:00 in the morning, that we would not have a room until later in the afternoon. But again, we were excited to have a room. So we went to our rooms to drop off our stuff and clean up a little. Our rooms were great. We had two adjoining rooms. Each had bamboo furniture and huge picture windows with balconies overlooking the river. That just added to our enjoyment of the hotel. After unloading our stuff, we headed back down to the reception to plan out our day. We decided to start with a bike ride around the area. The hotel has bikes with kids seats to use. So we loaded up and headed out. Abby and I were on one bike and Amy and Austin were on the other. I handed Abby the camera and told her to take lots of pictures. The bike ride was unbelievable. We rode through areas that felt like we were in a copy of National Geographic. The area was very rural and we passed women washing clothes in the river. We saw lots of beautiful, natural sites with great views of the karst hills and endless rice patties. After our bike ride, we returned to the hotel. We then decided to go into the town of Yangshuo to have lunch and explore the town. We were dropped off at the main shopping street. Of course, there was a KFC right where we were dropped off, so the kids were set on KFC for lunch. That was fine with Amy and I because we weren't that hungry and were looking forward to another great meal back at the hotel tonight. After lunch, we walked the streets of Yangshuo. Unfortunately, since we had already been in Beijing and done all our "China" shopping, we found the constant pushing to buy something a little annoying. Plus, we were a little tired. We walked through the town for a while before finally finding a nice cafe and sitting down for some snacks. After our snacks, we headed back to the hotel. We got cleaned up and headed down for dinner. We again sat outside and enjoyed a great local dinner. Amy and I shared a dish of local beer fish that was awesome. After dinner it was to bed for everyone given our previous nights sleep on the train.