A walk to remember

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I left Mike on Monday morning, sad to be leaving Suzhou and a little nervous about going out on my own for 3 1/2 weeks until I meet up with Ben and Cindi in Singapore. When I got to Nanjing I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, as I hadn't really been in "tourist" mode while I was in Suzhou.

My two main sources of "things to do" have been the Lonely Planet guidebook for China, and a website called Wikitravel, which is like Wikipedia but specifically designed for travelers, including attractions, restaurants, transportation information, and other useful things.

After checking in at my hostel, I picked a few things from the list, figured out where they were (man, traveling with a computer is handy), and set out to find lunch. I ended up wandering through the streets for a while, and spotted a baozi shop, which are little steamed buns filled with meat or vegetables. I got a few that had pork and apparently some egg (never had any like that in Suzhou) and decided to head towards the tall tower I recognized as the Nanjing Greenland Financial Center, known locally as the Zifeng Tower.

The NGFC/ZT is Nanjing's tallest building, as well as the 2nd tallest building in mainland China and 7th tallest in the world. I'd already seen 3 of the others in the top 8, with 2 more coming later on this trip (the twin towers in Malaysia), so that just leaves the top two (Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the Taipei 101, which I couldn't see from the plane when I flew into the Taipei airport last year).

Allegedly there's an observation deck, but I couldn't find the entrance (even with 2 false attempts), so I just satisfied myself with taking pictures of the building itself and then setting off for nearby Xuanwu Lake.

I walked around the perimeter of the lake for a while, part of which is surrounded by the remnants of the old city wall. Because of the wall, I couldn't leave the lake park area until I had walked quite a ways east, so I decided to keep going to Zijin Mountain, a large park on the east side of downtown with several attractions.

I got on bus #20, which allegedly takes you into the park and around to the various attractions, and then back out into the city. I didn't see anything that looked "attraction-y" at any of the stops (even though I knew what a few of the names meant, and they did indeed match the names of the places I knew were in the park), and when we got to the last one, we were kind of in the middle of nowhere.

At that point it was just me and one other lady and her grandson on the bus, so when they got off and the driver said something to me I assumed he was telling me this was the last stop, time to get off. As I never saw that bus come back by, and several hundred kilometers of walking confirmed our location just inside the southeast quadrant of nowhere, my later hypothesis is that he was just telling me to wait while he used the bathroom, and then he was going to come back and continue the loop, which was not part of the "official" stop names printed on the bus map. There was also a shuttle carrying people around the massive park, but I never managed to see a shuttle and a stop at the same time.

So, after walking for what seemed like unreasonably long, I made it to the entry of Ming Xiaoling. This 600-year-old tomb is the final resting place of the first Ming emperor (before the capital moved to Beijing, near where all the rest are buried in the more famous location).

I walked around this complex some more, then left to go to the nearby (ha) mausoleum of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, who founded the Republic of China in 1912 after the Qing Dynasty was overthrown. I laughed at nearby because once again I found myself hoofing it there, in a place clearly not designed for pedestrians. I walked along the road (no sidewalk), looking out for signs for 中山陵, the first two being Sun's name as he is retroactively known, and the last being the word for tomb.

I finally made it to the complex, was surprised to find out there was nobody manning the admission gates (probably because it was after 4pm already), and climbed the 392 steps to find....a closed gate and a sign that said "Closed on Mondays".

Well, I'd had about enough of that, so I braced myself for the long hike out of the park and back to civilization. After finally getting to the edge of the park, and thinking about what bus I could take to get back downtown, I come out of the park to find a subway station!

Even though it was still somewhat early, I was beat from walking all over town and all around that park (maybe as much as 10 or 15km that day) so I went back to the hostel for a relaxing evening of watching TV shows on my computer.

P.S. Sorry for the Mandy Moore reference in the title.

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Comments

[Brian]

Thanks!
Thanks for the apology in the P.S... I do believe it is warranted :) It definitely sounds like a trip that would've left me and Anita frustrated even though we would've seen plenty of local things. Have fun in Laos!