The beginning

Sunday 25th arrived in Chengdu.  We only had one day here but it was quite a busy one.  We went and had breakfast at 6am at a hostel round the corner.  We then went up to the panda breeding centre which was great.  The reserve has really large grounds which they are currently in the process of expanding.  The pandas were so cute and we got to see some that were only 6 months old, although most of them were still asleep.  They also had red pandas on the reserve which look more like racoons and I got to hold one :D.  After than we went to Wenshu monastry and had a vegetarian lunch - at 11am!  We then wandered down to see the statue of Mao and across to Renmin (the people's) park where we sat by the lake and enjoyed a lemon tea.  In the evening I went to a Sichuan Cultural Show and after tried hotpot... which was oh my god so hot!  Still you have to try things at least once!  Except for one of the things that we could dip into the hotpot which looked rather like cow intestines, no thanks!