Day 5 Erhai Lake

Itinerary for the day was the east shores of Erhai lake.  While photos on the internet looked good, AI kept warning that our first destination of Lixiangbang (the China 'Santorini) wasn't 'authentic'.   When we got there.... OHH the place is basically just photo set ups, like what we have back home in Sekinchan.  The modus operandi was, buy expensive drinks/food to enter an establishment with props for photo-taking.  Without that, there were limited photo opportunities.

Without paying 

We wandered around a bit. SE was against going into any establishment.  I thought, well we had come all this way.  SE remained adamant - she argued we could just take some photos around and leave.  I decided to insist we go for it.  A coffee cost RMB68/RM40. 

  

Ah much better

Kiddos weren't in the mood to take photos.  Somewhere between the stress of dealing with my teens and the beauty of that place, I missed hubby intensely.  Sigh.  You can't quite see it in the picture above, but SE is holding Captain Hook who has been along on all our trips.  

It was an uncomfortably hot day.  The coffee arrived as a half cup hehe.

With the RM40 coffee

I think the pizza fared better for CNY118/RM70.  Too bad it was loaded with fresh capsicum which the girls dislike.

Exorbitant coffee and pizza

The view WAS gorgeous - blue skies, the lake.  The props weren't bad actually, only thing we weren't optimising the angles (plus I had grumpy models).  Below were the best photos.

Sky and water

Platform

Violin

Sofa

Swing

Next destination was Xiaoputao or 'Little potato island'.

Island behind with temple on it

Better picture of island

Pomegranates again

Nothing too much to see so we Didi-ed to our last destination of Shuang Lang.  This was much bigger and more interesting.

More shops here

Struck off another to-do item on our list - 'Cross bridge noodles'.  The 'bridge' here had many small toppings which you drop into the hot stone bowls filled with steaming soup, together with the noodles.  We requested one spicy soup and one no-spicy.

Cross bridge noodles for lunch

After lunch, we wandered around the ancient town.  At one time I thought we had covered all of it, but eventually discovered that it was much larger.  

Skies and water again

Sunset here was special due to the combination of Cangshan moutains behind, clouds lit from below, all reflected by the lake.  It was nice to just sit, wait and experience.

Sunset

After that we were ready to leave. But we walked for ages before we could exit the ancient town area!  So relieved when we finally reached the edge and could get a Didi.