Jiulong lake Ningbo, China: nature so close to the city....

This past weekend I got a chance to go to Jiulong lake about a 45 minute ride from my apartment. I stayed in a beautiful, luxurious, well-equipped hotel with all the facilities that you can imagine: pools (indoors and outdoors), racket ball court, gym, sauna and a hot tub and probably more.

I didn't get to most of it. The room and outdoor garden took most of my attention. The hotel is situated on one of the beautiful lakes in the area with mountains as a back drop.

The view from the hotel room. Excellent. The hotel room also had a bathtub that was situated just in front of the balcony inside the room in a sort of drop down living room making the room two levels

Additionally, admission tickets for the Jiulong lake scenic area are given to you by the hotel and handed to you upon check-in. The next morning after the breakfast buffet is when I went there.  The breakfast buffet wasn't too bad because I wasn't expecting too much, but they did have some western stuff which I gorged upon happily. It's hard to eat the Chinese food when western food is around, although I like Chinese food a lot.

After that, I headed out to the scenic area that I had tickets for and got on a fairy boat to an island in the middle of the lake. That little island had some monkeys on it, and there was a path leading around the island which took about 20 minutes to walk, nothing too much there but fresh air and placid scenery.

Then boarded the fairy back to the main area, bought tickets for a shuttle bus the went up the mountain to another touristy spot. Luckily I went on a Tuesday, so the crowds were thin. First was a fantastic walk up through bamboo trees. It looked almost like a fairy tale, something not real, with specs of light peaking through the trees.

The stairs in these areas are always built so solidly.






                      The stairs led up to an emerald pond which was picturesque, to say the least.

Following that I walked down another many flights of stairs leading to the exit beside small, very clear, cleaning looking streams. The day's temperature was extremely pleasant, and as you see in the picture, I am just wearing a t-shirt.

Great day!