Day 377 - Resting out the rain

We were woken not once but TWICE this morning, much earlier than we wanted, by knocks on our door by hotel staff trying to get us on a bus to the mountain, even though we had told them the night before we weren't going today! We were prepared for the unnaturally loud voices of the other guests getting ready to leave at 6am - they even semi-obliged when Adam went out and told them to "shush", but we were not very happy with the loud, continuous knocks at our door! Nevertheless, we made up for the early wake-up calls by then sleeping in until 11am!! The joys of being on holiday ... and the reward after suffering from lots of early mornings and long bus/train rides.

Given that it was pouring outside, we were pretty stoked with our decision to have a rest day today, and we hung around reading and watching Chinese tv, until our bellies screamed at us and we ventured out into the rain for lunch. We had a nice surprise when we met up with the deaf group who had just returned from the mountain, and they gave us some advice about how to move on from this tiny city - they had realised that catching the bus cut their travelling time in 3 compared to the train. So we headed off to the bus station and found the same thing with our next destination.

The rest of our day was taken up by munching on lunch, stocking up on snacks for our day at the National Park tomorrow, some internet time, and then "exhaustion" from such a busy day set in and we had to retire for more reading, tv, and preparing for yet another 5am start in the morning.

The only sightseeing we did for the day was looking out our window at the nearby village and seeing it come to life at night as smike drifted from the chimneys.

Not really adlibing anything.