Shay and Maayan's 80 Days around the world: Xiamen and Gulang-Yu

We took another sleeper-bus from Shanghai to Xiamen in the Fujian province and arrived at our selected guesthouse just in time for breakfast.
As we waited for a room to become available, Mai went shopping for Yogurt and milk to go with the granola we had.
The guesthouse, though located between two universities and by a busy junscion, had a quite and tranquile atmosphere and a beautiful yard with tables, chairs, and a cat family :)
Could anyone ask for more?

We spent our first day relaxing in the yard, playing with the kittens and watching the olimpic games on intervals...
This is a part of the yard in the evening:

The next day we went to Gulang-Yu. This is a tiny island which used to be inhabited by foreigners and with colonial arcitechture mixed with chinese.
A 10 minute ferry ride and we were at this place of reported beauty and quite, a place where piano music is heard from every house and where no cars are allowed to preserve the peace and clean air...

It is beautiful, alright, but not much else.
Far too many tourists and far too many street-hawkers selling everything and anything to eager tourists. Temperatures high over 30 (deg. cel), 80% humidity and the water filthy with the oil of cargo ships.
And look at the poor turtle:

So we decided to stay away from the different tourist atractions and took a walk on a route circling the island (6.5 km). Less touristic, and far, far more interesting.

We didn't walk all the way around as we were pulled back to the touristic parts in search of food, but we walked a good bit.
Maayan wanted ice cream and bought what seemed to be vanilla-choclate cone, but ALAS, it was vanila with red-beans!

YUMMY!

And Shay bought himself a big knife. Look how proud and happy he is:

The next day brought to us a new friend; a belgian named Florence who came with us for a walk on the beach. She went for a swim, the brave girl!
the chinese have managed to ruin this potentially beautiful stretch of sand - it is full of garbage, brocken glass and the water is filthy here as well.