Four days, two daughters and no snow mountain
“Flowers really are a Yunnan speciality. Thank you! I feel safe recommending you.”
A short window, two children, one grandmother
The flights were already booked when we started talking, and they landed in Kunming at 1:25 in the morning with two girls aged 7 and 11 and their grandmother in the group. Four days was all the family had. She told us straight away what she did not want: no snow mountain, no Shangri-La, and as few hotel changes as possible. What she did want was flowers.
What we took out of the plan
We dropped Lijiang and Yulong Snow Mountain entirely, since she was not going up the mountain anyway and the drive would have eaten a day. Kunming stayed, and Dali got two nights in a sea-view room. The spare time went into flowers: Dounan flower market in Kunming, Asia's biggest fresh-cut flower market with flowers all year round, and slow days along Erhai Lake in Dali. They also asked how they would manage six suitcases on the high-speed train, so we arranged cars at both stations instead of leaving them to carry everything through the platforms.
How the four days went
They reached the hotel at 3:30 in the morning and slept in. The first day was Dianchi Lake and the flower market, then the high-speed train to Dali, Shuanglang, a boat on Erhai and Jinshuan Island. The next day was Longkan pier, Wencun, Luwo Mountain and Xizhou old town, and on the last day Dali old town and the S-bend road at Panxi before the train back to Kunming and a 2:30 a.m. flight home. They asked us to put one room as a king bed so she could sleep with both daughters, and we changed the room plan before they arrived.
Her words afterwards
She wrote to us a week after getting home, still catching up on sleep, and then did something we did not ask for: she sent our number to a friend. That friend wrote to us because our photos from the trip looked like fun. Her own summary was simple. She trusts us to look after people she sends.