From Shanghai to Guilin

Gisella didn't show up this morning. An older man called Peter came and took us, as I requested, to the MagRail station, instead of taking us to the airport by car I had asked to take the train. Instead of an hour assuring in traffic, we took the fastest train in the world, it reaches 440 km/hr without ever touching the rails. It levitates magnetically over them and it feels like flying. We reached the airport in 8 minutes and took our flight. I really was but well at all after that terrible lunch from the day before, we all felt poorly but took a nice Costa Coffee and things started to look chipper. We hadn't managed to get Oleg sitting with us but a nice stewardess moved 3 men around in order to place him with us and we had a good flight. When we arrived this lovely young man called Bouling picked us up, and since the flight was a bit late he took us immediately to Elephant Hill. This city is yet again completely different from what we have seen so far. The air is very hot and humid, 38°C and 90% humidity, stifling, with luxuriant foliage all around it feels tropical. It sits between 2 rivers, and we saw many people, families with children bathing in the Yellow River, probably not recommendable..
Elephant Hill is called so because it's in the shape of a slerping elephant that suits on a lake. We climbed all the way up, not easy in the stifling heat with my airplane shoes. They kept sapling water at us to cook the steps but this made them so slippery that as soon as Robbie offered me his arm I list my concentration, skyped and cracked my phone screen. The view was amazing. It is not legal to build high rises here, so on the river fronts there are villas with gardens and terraces. This city center numbers just 1 Mln inhabitants so it's considered a tiny village by their standards. It like like a holiday place, festive, clean and happy.
At the top of the step stairs there is a Ming tower, our guide couldn't tell us much about it. It was probably a pagoda knows down after the war.
Going down he was going to take us to our hotel but we mentioned that in our program we had another hill, the Fubo or Waves hill, so he quickly organized and we were happy he did.
This was even more beautiful than the last full of caves and books to visit. The view from above was even more spectacular than Elephant Hill and underneath we visited the caves where the age the famous local Osmanthi wine, which is really not a wine at all but a rice, 45° liquor.
We then went for a very quick shower at our hotel, the Bravo hotel which was great, the best we've had so far. The room was perfect and we finally had 3 beds. Bouling wanted to take us to a good local restaurant but there was an hour wait so he quickly reorganized and he found another place downtown where only locals eat and were finally had a truly local meal. And wow do the locals eat well. Rice, fish, bao, soup, everything very good.
Our guide was just lovely, he are with us and was so descreet that we had to insist to get him to eat something.
At the end of a very satisfying meal the 3 of us went out in heavy rain to get to the hotel before, we promptly got lost. By the time we were at the hotel the rain had finished and the pool was closed by it was fun. A nice shower and a comfortable bed ended our day with news of Italy's government doomsday destruction.Read more