The walk from Xianhu Road subway station to the entrance to Fairy Lake Botanical Garden was about ten minutes. There wasnt much to see as it was through a residential area. I had already bought my ticket online through their WeChat account, and it looks like this is the way to go as the ticket offices are closed due to Covid. The ticket was 15 RMB. I made my way through the large gate and scanned my ticket and started my walk to the centre of the park. There are buses that take you around the botanical gardens if you dont want to walk. I followed the path for about ten minutes or so. There were some nice little boardwalks that branched off from the path so you could walk through them. I had spotted a few trails on the map at the entrance and was looking for the first one, which I soon came across.
This trail led all the way to a viewpoint and TV tower. I think they might have been on the adjacent mountain, Wutongshan. I followed the trail for a while. There were a few other people on it, but not too many. It was
a lot of stairs, but not too steep. I couldnt really see much because of the trees and cloud coverage. There were some pretty flowers along the route so I spent some time taking photos of them and it also gave me a good opportunity to catch my breath. It was also raining a little. After a while I came to a pavilion, where a few people were resting. I decided to take a break there for a bit. One criticism, I have of the botanical gardens is their half arsed attempts at signposting. For example, at the pavilion there were three different routes you could take, but only one was signposted. This happened a few times on the trail and was pretty annoying as it meant I had to follow some paths blindly not knowing where I would end up. Since I didnt want to go to the observation point, I decided to take the trail next to the pavilion that was heading down and hoped it would get me near to the lake. It only took about 10 minutes or so, and I had the road at the Pavilion. There were a few different paths. One
was leading to the temple, I had read it was closed online so decided to skip that, although plenty of people were heading in that direction.
Instead, I took a walk through the Palm Collection. This collection was started in 1986 and contains around 170 different species of palms, including some Chinese endemic ones. I enjoyed the walk as I really like palms and the tropical feeling they give me. Some of the leaves were huge and stretched over a couple of metres. As I came out of the palm forest, I could spot the lake not too far away, so I headed there. The lake looked quite pretty. There were lots of trees, including palm trees surrounding it. It looked smaller than what I had seen when walking higher, but I later realised that what I had seen then was not Fairy Lake, but the reservoir close by. I decided to take a walk around the edge of the lake and just soak in the views. Once again, there were signposts pointing out stuff to see near the lake, and they just seemed to vanish, but I couldnt tell if that meant you were now in the place
that had previously been signposted as it looked no different. I came across bird perched on one of the rocks. I think it was waiting to catch some fish to eat. Also there were some great views of the scenery surrounding the lake. The scenery was reflected in the water and that was pretty. There was also quite a bit of mist, which gave the lake and surrounding area an air of mystery. There were a few pavilions scattered along the bank of the lake and I took some time to relax in one and read and soak in the views. I headed over the eleven arch bridge and continued along by the lake. I passed a caf, which had a cute sign/sculpture of a couple sitting at a table drinking coffee. There was also a stone boat further on that had been turned into some kind of shop.
I came to another pavilion that was out in the lake, joined to the land by a walkway.
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