Three Days in Anshun - Dragon Palace Caves and Longnon Waterfall

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Our stay in Anshun was so pleasant.  It is a big city, some 6 million, but it seemed so small and quaint.  It has lots of green space and is nestled among huge karst mountains, some as tall as the buildings themselves.

Our hotel is possible the nicest we've had so far.  Truly five star and this one was free thanks to our Hotels.com reward program.  We have a huge busniess king suite,,,all very modern with a glass enclosed tub, high end electronic, and stellar wifi.  The staff were a professional and accommodating as one could expect.

We arrived early in the day and took a nice long walk around the neighborhood.  We discoverd a vast grocery store in the basement of one of the malls.  In addition to a well stocked supply of just about everything it has a grand deli section with lots of prepared foods.  We made a few choices and for the next three nights this was our goto for dinner.

On our second day we had planned to get out to the caves and waterfalls but the rains came early and stayed well into the afternoon.  We hunkered down in our room and enjoyed the rest.  In the afternoon we ventured out and explored the city on a five miles hike around town.  Up and down hills, through quiet neighborhoods and busy streets.  Everyone was so pleasant, returning our smiles with there's.  Once again it was obvious that we were not a common sight.  We have not seen a western face for at least a couple of weeks..oh, the was one teenage backpacker in Kunming..we were all startled to see each other and laughed.  Other than him, we have been alone....it's nice.

Our second day we headed out with our handdrawn and digital signs, a few maps, and made it to the local bus station without a hitch.  We bought our tickets, boarded the bus and were on our way out of town in a jiff.  It was a small 20 pax bus and a direct route to the visitor center at Dragon Palace Caves.

Here's the video I made of our day.  The rains held back, the water fall gushing out of the cavern was amazing, and the park was beautiful.  The caves were extensive and we both acknowledged that we had never been in such a huge underground river system before.  In fact this cave system is the largest nad longest underground navigable river in the world.  At the end of our day we navigated our way back into town, enjoyed a quiet dinner and bit of TV and settled in for a relaxing evening.

We purposely booked an additional night so that we could hang out until it was time for our late afternoon train to Guilin.  We both decided that his has been our most favorite Chinese city thus far on this trip.  We could easily come back and stay longer.