Our place of stay in the city of Lijiang was the E-Outfitting Boutique Hotel, a small establishment that has maybe 8 or so rooms. Our notes and comments from the two nights we stayed at this property!
Windhourse Tours initially booked the four of us into two rooms – the arrangement we asked for for properties that didn’t have a family suite. As this was the low season, we were again the only residents staying at E-Outfitting, so at arrival, the hotel owner – a lady who looked like she was in her mid-30s – put us in a family suite instead. The only thing though was that the suite was on the third floor, and the wintering squirrels had been coming in during the day time when the room was unoccupied to chew on the wood log ceilings, and leaving wood shreds around the clinic. We liked the family suite so the owner was happy to quickly do a cleaning of the suite to get it ready for us.
The hotel looks like it’s previously a traditional mansion but converted into a small hotel. The property is located away from the city center and on a side road well off the main road. Our driver had difficulties finding the hotel, but this again is where our Lijiang tour guide – Ah Luo – came to the rescue again by calling the hotel ahead for her to meet us on the side road, and also to prepare dinner for the four of us. As the hotel is located in a very secluded area well away from human traffic, there weren’t any dining establishments nearby, with only a supermarket 200m walk away.
The suite itself is large: there was a entrance area with sofa, a very large main bedroom with a king-size bed, and a smaller room with two smaller super-single beds. On the surface, this would had been perfect for us but the room design had a single but significant challenge: the bathroom, toilet and double sinks were in a part of the suite without curtains and with glass doors – i.e. completely see through. It wasn’t something we couldn’t get around, but it did mean that only one of us could bathe/use the toilet/use the sinks at any one time.
Also, on Day 04, there was an electricity outage just when we were coming down for breakfast. The hotel owner and assistant quickly made do: they put out breakfast in the courtyard where there was still emergency lighting: though that meant we were having breakfast al fresco style in -1 degree celsius at 6:30AM. Quite an experience, but we managed.
In all, we liked this property: the owner was really nice and warm, her maybe 7 year old daughter was super cute and chatted a bit with us, and the other residents was a very friendly and tame dog and two cats that roamed the compound. Recommended especially for families with younger kids, but probably a bit more tricky if you have older kids [because of the bathroom/toilet design].