We hopped on another fast train to get from Xi’an to Chengdu and stayed in a nice AirBnb apartment directly in the city center.

Chengdu is the capital of the Sichuan region and famous for the Giant pandas. So we spend our first day in the Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. The park is spacious and beautifully landscaped with bamboo forests. When you see the Giant Pandas, they just cause a cuteness overload! Furthermore, the park is also home to the smaller Red Pandas. The ultimate goal of the research base is to increase the number of these endangered species again and to release them into the wild, once the minimum population needed is reached.

We also explored Chengdu’s Jinli Street and the old city center with its little alleys full of shops and street food stalls.

Apart from these sights, the Chengdu area is known for its beautiful landscape around Mount Emei. So we took a long distance bus to spend a day there and visit the Golden Summit. Unfortunately, it was quite rainy and foggy that day and we could only get a few glimpse on the Golden Buddha statue at the top.

Sichuan cuisine is globally known for its particular type of pepper and spicy hotpots. And hell yes… the food is spicy, but very delicious! Besides trying lots of Sichuan dishes, we also found the bakery chain “Paris Baguette”, where we had our first Western breakfast in weeks… definitely priceless :D!

As we like to try traditional and typical stuff, we treated ourselves to a Chinese massage, cupping included. What looked like torture was really worth it and definitely relaxed our muscles.