A hill and a bath

Saturday I joined a bunch of co-workers to go on a hiking trip up a little mountain outside of town called DaHeiShan (Big black mountain?). It's been a long time since I've been hiking and this was not as easy as it first looked. The route we took was very steep in some places and the weather was windier and colder than anyone thought it was going to be that day. Even though everyone got bruised, scraped, cut, and exhausted we were all in a good mood and everyone had fun through most of the hike. Here's a few photos...

Starting out at the bottom of the mountain...



A tough path up...



A stop for a group photo and a rest...



Some of us way off in the distance...



Catching up along a flat part...



Almost to the top...



A temple at the top. This isn't actually an old temple. It's pretty new and was created as a tourist attraction...



Starting the walk down the other side of the mountain. Seems some people decided it was easier to walk backwards...



After the hiking trip a few of us went to a Korean-style bath house in town that evening (sorry... no pictures of this. Hehe). I had not been to one of these before and it was really nice after hiking up and down a windy cold mountain all day. Most of the bath house is divided up between the women's and men's saunas and baths, so when we got there the ladies went off to their area and we went to ours. I spent some time in the wet sauna and in a very large hot tub. That was sooooo relaxing. After awhile of this we put on some pajama-like outfits and went to the restaurant there and joined the ladies for dinner. The restaurant was pretty nice too... we sat at a low table on some soft mats on the floor, and there were a few little bird cages hanging nearby with songbirds. This place had some of the best Korean food I've had here in Dalian.