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Published: August 26th 2008
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Pharmacy in Huangshan
Old school pharmacy on Old Street in Huangshan Huangshan 黄山 8th - 11th July 2008
And so the travelling begins. For Stacy and Amy their travels began when they left England for Shanghai on the 23rd June, but for me, my travels began when I left Shanghai, my home for the past year on the 8th July. After a long day of apartment cleaning, last minute errands, a stressful post office visit, a 3 hour wait and a minor arguement with my landlord to get my full deposit back and of course our last meal at Ciao Cafe, it was time to leave Shanghai for our first stop: Huangshan.
We had hard sleeper tickets for the overnight train and it was Stacy and Amy's first experience of sleeper trains in China. Hard sleeper carriages are dormitry styled divided into a number of open cabins each of which are made up of 2 sets of triple bunk beds. The bottom bunks are the most expensive because of their ease of access and roominess, the top bunks the cheapest with just enough space to lie down and sleep!
We arrived in Huangshan 12 hours later and were greeted with significantly cooler weather than what
we'd had in Shanghai. Our hostel was on Old Street, a quaint cobbled stone street with old style buildings and shops selling all kinds of wares ranging from calligraphy brushes and ink pots (some of which were enormous!) to locally produced souviners and food.
Huangshan itself was absolutely magnificient. We took a cable car up the east side, walked around the top for a couple of hours before descending via cable car on the west side. The views from the top were breathtaking and we lucked out with the weather as it was quite a clear day. It was very surreal being so high up with clouds floating so closely around you, daily life as you know it feels so distant...
Nanjing 南京 12th - 15th July 2008
The next stop on our travels was a former capital of China and we once again returned to the train station for an overnight hard sleeper train from Huangshan to Nanjing. Our second sleeper train experience wasn't as plesant as the first, mainly because our carriage had an outrageous number of very loud male snorers! A slight disadvantage of cheap travel I suppose. Myself and Amy
Giant Ink pot
yes, this could actually be a fish pond... but no, its an inkpot for giant caligraphy! were kept up for most of the night but amazingly Stacy managed to sleep through most of it!
We arrived in Nanjing at 6am, went straight to our hostel where we thankfully were able to immediately check in and unsurprisingly we all went back to sleep for a few hours! Nanjing is a large city with wide tree lined roads and of course, like most places in China, is very busy! We spent 3 days in Nanjing exploring the city, doing a fair bit of sightseeing and meeting fellow travellers at the hostel we were staying in.
We visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial which was a grueling 3 hours of reading about and looking at pictures of what had happened just less than 70 years ago... I came out feeling drained and wondering about the world we live in. The mausoleum of Sen-Yat Sen, founder of modern China, resides on Purple Mountain - about 30mins outside of the centre of the city, which we went to with James and Rich, two fellow travellers we'd met in our hostel from London and Edinburgh, respectively. From the mausoleum we walked over to the Linggu Temple and pagoda, also
New bracelets
Our Huangshan souviners, bracelets made from jade and stone found in the Huangshan area located on Purple Mountain, stopping along the way to have a little play in some huge inflated balls on the lake!
Our stay in Nanjing wouldn't have been complete without a boat ride on the lake just outside the wall, a walk along the Nanjing wall (although we could have planned that a little better so we weren't up there on the wall in the swelteringly hot midday sun with no water!) and the Confucious Temple at night.
Nanjing had a few types of streetfood which we hadn't seen before on our travles, one of which became an immediate top ranking favourite for all of us, the egg burger! Other favourites (mainly from Shanghai) includes: jiaozi and xiaolongbao - both of which are a kind of dumpling with meat and soup inside, la mien - hand stretched noodles, man tou - delicious herby bread and of course, my all time favourite, fruit on a stick - as the name suggests, fruit on a stick, which is then covered in sugar!)
Our stay in Nanjing ended much too quickly and I was sad to leave. but all good things must come to an end and
Up up and away
Cable car ride up to the top of Huangshan I was excited to be heading over to Xi'an for the second time. We swapped contact details with James and Rich and then it was off to Xi'an.
Check out Stacy's blog for a different perspective from our travels: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/Stace-in-the-Sun/
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Check out Stacy's blog...
the address of which is at the bottom of this blog!