ZhangJiaJie

Zhangjiajie! This was one place that I had never been to before, so I was really excited for this vacation. We took a sleeper train there overnight, and got to the city of Zhanghjiajie in the late morning. We found our bus heading to the village of Wulingyuan where our hostel was and after getting checked in and all it was about 1pm. We were planning on going to the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park right away, and asked our hostel for directions. The kid working at the desk tried telling us we didn't have time to go there that day, so we should just chill there, but we only had like 3 days in Zhangjiajie, and no time for a day of nothing, so we went anyways, and it was a good thing we did, cuz the kid was crazy and we had plenty of time to see stuff in the park! We took a gondola ride up to the top of the mountains, and...wow.

There's a free bus system within the park, and after awhile, and with the park closing fairly soon, we figured we better so home and started trying to find our way back to the entrance. Well, turns out there isn't a bus down from the mountains, so we either had to pay for the gondola ride again, walk (which we didn't have time for), or pay for and ride the Bailong elevator, so we went for the elevator. 

It's apparently the longest outdoor elevator in the world, and is glass so you can look around, but we were the last ones to get into our elevator, so we couldn't really see anything... Plus the elevator view is blocked by cement for the last half down. (I took this picture in the reflection of the elevator ceiling...I'm not that much taller than the Chinese, haha)

That night we ate the most delicious noodles and explored the village of Wulingyuan a bit.

The next day we went back into Zhangjiajie city and went to Tianmen Mountain National Park. The gondola ride up is the longest in the world, and it was super foggy when we went...at times we could barely see 20 feet in front of us, and it looked like we were gonna smash right into the side of the mountain before the gondola swung up and above the mountain.

Super foggy, but it was really beautiful.

We found the glass walkway! It was actually terrifying. The park wasn't really busy when we were there, and so we took our time on the walkway.

 Once we were done at the top of the mountain, we took the gondola half way down, then got onto a bus that took this 99-turn road to Heaven's Gate.

They say there are 999 steps to the top, but I counted 905 on the way up, and 904 down, so I think they're wrong.

At the top of the stairway to heaven there are all these love locks.

Getting back down the mountain, and back to Wulingyuan, we explored the village a bit more. It's a really neat place.

The next day we went back to the Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, this time walking around at the bottom of the mountains rather that getting the view from the top. It was also breathtaking.

I successfully saw monkeys on every single vacation this semester!

We got our stuff from our hostel and then headed to the train station to catch our last long train ride of the semester. :( I actually really like train rides.

\/ Train rides captured in one picture...just missing the purple noodles.

I also figured out how to make people look like Avatars on the train ride home...too late to take awesome pictures as avatars in the park :(