Chengdu - Wenshu Monastery
The day after the Long Walk, we headed off to the Wenshu Monastery. Which was thankfully only a short walk from the hostel. It was quiet (a welcome miracle) and peaceful. We wandered through the outside gardens which had plenty of ponds and plenty of turtles, spent some time enjoying the various touches outside the buildings, and took some pictures.
One of the reasons we chose to go there is that the monks run a vegetarian restaurant that’s supposed to be very good, so we stopped at the restaurant on the way out to have lunch, where we were told in understandable English that it was buffet day. So we paid, went through the buffet line, and sat. In the family style seating with a bunch of other people because that was the only option. I had been pretty careful going through the line, and had avoided several dishes with either peppers or obvious seaweed, but I didn’t key in to the dark green noodles mixed with the regular noodles in a cold salad. I too a big bite, and they weren’t noodles. They were noodles shaped strands of cold kelp. It was all I could do not to visibly gag, but I managed it and finished everything else.
The food wouldn’t even have been an issue worthy of mentioning, but it turned out that it wasn’t really “buffet” day - it was a day that the buffet was available. So I could have ordered off the menu (which was advertised to have English, but that I never saw), but had been steered to the buffet instead.
I bet there was some really *good* stuff on the menu too. :)
One of the reasons we chose to go there is that the monks run a vegetarian restaurant that’s supposed to be very good, so we stopped at the restaurant on the way out to have lunch, where we were told in understandable English that it was buffet day. So we paid, went through the buffet line, and sat. In the family style seating with a bunch of other people because that was the only option. I had been pretty careful going through the line, and had avoided several dishes with either peppers or obvious seaweed, but I didn’t key in to the dark green noodles mixed with the regular noodles in a cold salad. I too a big bite, and they weren’t noodles. They were noodles shaped strands of cold kelp. It was all I could do not to visibly gag, but I managed it and finished everything else.
The food wouldn’t even have been an issue worthy of mentioning, but it turned out that it wasn’t really “buffet” day - it was a day that the buffet was available. So I could have ordered off the menu (which was advertised to have English, but that I never saw), but had been steered to the buffet instead.
I bet there was some really *good* stuff on the menu too. :)