Wednesday 11 September 2013

Day 36 - Xiamen and Gulangyu Island


After missing the ferry yesterday, my first task was to go to the ferry port and sort my ticket out. Since my hostel was quite far out, I had o take the bus and then walk for a bit before I got there.
Once there I managed to find the counter to get the ticket from and sort out my journey for Thursday the 12th at 18:00, looks like their website is quite a bit out in terms of the time.



Once this was sorted, I walked to the ferry pier for Gulangyu Island, this is a small island that is a must see when in Xiamen. You can buy a cheap return ticket or opt for an all inclusive ticket to see all the parks and museums on the island. I did opt for the later as it seemed good value.



Gulangyu reminded me immediately of Shamian Island in Guangzhou with it's colonial style buildings, cafes and overall atmosphere.
It is well worth a visit and you can see some nice colonial style buildings but also some buildings looking like a ship, including a mast or one looking like the captains deck on a container ship.



It's certainly nice to just wander around and it feels quite different from Xiamen, there are also no cars or scooters on the island so it's very quiet. The trees provide enough shade and if you go around the island you can find some nice beaches for a swim.






The all inclusive ticket gives you entry to two of the main gardens, the piano museum, Sunlight Rock, the aviary and the organ museum. I would say it's probably not really worth it after having seen some of the places, while it will save you money if you want to visit everything, the most interesting parts are Sunlight Rock and Hayue garden with the statue of Zheng Chenggong and if you only go to see these two it will be cheaper not to get the all inclusive ticket.


After walking around the island and seeing the gardens it was already quite late in the day and on the ferry back I got to see the sunset. Overall it was a very enjoyable day on the island.


You might have noticed that I have posted less pictures on this post, I will try to limit my pictures between 10 and 15. I felt like I got a bit sloppy with my editing and selecting of pictures and ended up posting way too man for each day.
This should hopefully mean you get to see a better selecting of pictures and I try to get my Flickr 'Best of' set up to date so you can see more pictures there.


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