The Purple Mountain and Tombs of Nanjing

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Today was a really awesome day. First Jie's mom drove us to Purple Mountain, a big mountain in Nanjing, where we saw a bunch of different attractions. We met Jie's cousin there and he went with us too. First we saw Sun Yat-sen's mausoleum. We saw his tomb and where he's buried. He overthrew the Qing Dynasty and pretty much founded the Republic of China. His tomb was a huge park enclosure and then 300 steps up to his tomb. We climbed a lot of stairs throughout the day. Then we took a car tour of the mountain where we saw a lot of monuments for veterans, and also climbed a 9 story tower. It had a spiral staircase and at the top had a great view of the mountain and the city of Nanjing. We also stopped at a beautiful scenic area that had hundreds of pidgeons that you could feed. It was a really nice place. Next we went to an underwater museum (aquarium) and saw a ton of exotic tropical and chinese fish. They had jellyfish, and sharks, and a tunnel that you could walk through under the tanks. You could also feed sea lions. Finally we saw the Ming tombs, where the first emperor of the Ming dynasty is buried. It had an ancient wall, still preserved going around the mausoleum. We walked around the mauseoleum which had a lot of ancient dragon head statues and some reconstructed Ming era buildings. We took some stairs into the woods behind the mausoleum, not knowing where they would go. Turns out there were about 500 stairs up part of the mountain, then 100 down with a path to walk next to the back of the ancient wall and do a circle around to the front of the mausoleum. It was a beautiful path and a really peaceful place though. We took a taxi back to a really nice 5 star hotel in Nanjing. Jie's dad's office is in the hotel so we got to use the gym and pool area for free. After working out we ate in the restaurant in the hotel and waited a couple hours for Jie's dad to finish a meeting so he could drive us home. Overall it was a great day. Really nice weather, a lot of walking, and saw a lot of cool sights. We have one more day in Nanjing, then on the 28th (27th in America), we're flying to Beijing!

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Photos

the path along the wall
we didn't know we would have to climb over 500 steps to get here

the spiral staircase we climbed
9 floors