A vacation in...January? Spring Festival's Beginning in Anqing & Yellow Mountain

(Over two months ago) I enjoyed the freedom that Spring Festival in China grants--5 weeks of paid vacation in the middle of the school year.  In honor of the two month anniversary of the adventures I decided to post the tales of the trip (okay, I'm a fraud; I finally got to doing this.  Collectively my friend and I had 1500 photos, a daunting task to sort and an easy one to procrastinate on!)

I spent the entirety of my trip with my friend, Annie, who works in the same company but works in Anqing in Anhui province.  We both wanted to travel, so we decided to jetset together.  I started by visiting her in Anqing because my work finished before hers.  Here we're in one of the few "western" restaurants in Anqing enjoying an Irish coffee, fitting for the leprechaun in the picture.

We planned to go to Yellow Mountain after my arrival, but a huge snow in Anqing stopped all the buses and trains, so we decided to have a massive on-going snowfight instead!

It took 3 hours to walk the 1/2 mile from the bus station to a cafe because, well, we got distracted with things like this.  Each of us took a turn shaking a tree, rolling in snow, making snowmen, throwing snowballs with security guards (What? They threw it first!)

Here, Any and Lucy pose at the Emerald Pond near yellow mountain. Annie's Chinese friend's niece, Lucy, is studying for the IELTS test (English Language test) and she joined us for the weekend to help us with traveling while we helped her with her English.

We made it to Yellow Mountain (after multiple traffic concerns that it wouldn't happen) and we arrived on a rather foggy day.  Here's the view from the cable car suspended high in the air.  Great view, huh?

This is a famous tree with the North Sea in the background.  Again, stunning. (note the sarcasm)

After climbing literally 2 km of stairs, we finally climbed above the cloud/fog level and came to some clear skies.  This is the excitement showing we finally made it to a place with sites!

Yellow Mountain is the most internationally famous mountain in China.  It is rumored to have inspired the floating islands in the movie Avatar.  Here you can see the mystical clouds passing through the surrounding mountains.

Atop a Yellow mountain peak.  You're probably thinking "WOW he put on weight and needs new clothes."  Well, that's simply due to the 7 layers of clothing I was wearing on this trip.  The hotels lacked proper heating, so we were all constantly in 5+ layers.

It being the middle of winter and a sunny day, the snow was melting down the stairs, but in the areas with no sunlight, like the Turtle's Cave here, the stairs were solely ice.  This was fine, but it wasn't so cool the second time when the bottom of the staircase instantly turned off and was an edge with a simple railing.  I don't like edges of high buildings.

While it is high, the views are spectacular.

Where does this path lead?  A beautiful view, yet slightly tainted with the anticipation of what is at its end.  The answer: stairs.  Chinese mountains are not like European mountains.  In Europe, there are slow winding paths to reach the top.  In China, it's a steep staircase straight up!

Here the most famous tree of Yellow Mountain, the welcoming tree.  As the branch reaches out from the stem it appears to be a someone bowing his/her head and extending a hand to welcome you to Yellow Mountain.