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We were up early on Thursday morning and had left home by 8am in an attempt to be on time for our train to Nanjing. And so began the amazing race. It turns out there are 2 railway stations in Shanghai about 45 mins apart. Luckily we arrived in plenty of time at Shanghai South Railway Station to Nanjing. Strangely when we looked at the board on our arrival at the station, there was no 0930 train to Nanjing. The intrepid Ian (guess who is writing at this point) used his amazing linguistic skills to ask a helpful security lady...there was confusion for a moment at which point Ian asked again and so the walk began. If you have ever seen the programme ‘The Amazing Race; you will have some idea what occurred, as we had 49 mins to carry out a 45 minutes journey. William helpfully asked how many metro stops to the other metro station, at which point to which Daddy responded ‘13’. Fortunately it was also rush hour and so nobody had to worry about falling over on the train....Nanny’s first experience on the metro was exciting to say the least. Amazingly we won the race against the
clock and settled down into our seats with seconds to spare. Oh how comfy first class was....never have comfy first class seats been more gratefully received. Nanny couldn’t breathe for the first ten mins but we all soon settled into the 170km/hour train ride.
In no time at all, we were at Nanjing station in the scorching heat. Being experienced train travellers, we knew that we had to buy the return tickets on arrival at the station. After a false start, we managed to find a much longer queue at a different ticket office and Ian bravely stood in the queue while we waited at the side. When he got to the front, the friendly lady behind the counter spoke a language similar to Chinese but only in the way that English and French are Indo-European languages. After a crowd had gathered to help, and the friendly lady revelled in her seat of power, Ian managed to ascertain that there were exactly 0 return tickets available. It was at this point that he made the difficult decision to part company with the friendly Chinese ticket lady and bear his good tidings to the beautiful compassionate understanding Joanna who smiled
sweetly and whispered ‘It doesn’t matter, dear’.
On departing from Nanjing station into the bright sunshine, we were easily able to procure a taxi to take us to our lovely hotel. We had been recommended the Suning Universal Hotel which gave us a suite of 2 bedrooms, a lounge and kitchen area all for less than 1000RMB per night (about £100). It was the perfect family hotel and we would recommend it to anyone. There was a great swimming pool on the 29th floor with views across the city and a hotpot restaurant on the 3rd floor which we ventured to on our first evening.
We settled into our hotel and ascertained that there were no train tickets back to Shanghai until after the 6th May, we were about to agree to a 4 hour long bus ride home until we were saved at the last minute by the offer of a train at midday on Saturday. This meant that we lost a day in Nanjing but were able to come home in comfort. We ventured out into the midday sun to do a touch of sightseeing and found some amazing sights along the river. We headed to the
Temple of Confucius and took a cruise along the river which was really relaxing and we saw some amazing architecture and sights along the way. By the end of this cruise we were ready for a rest and headed back to the hotel for a swim and dinner in the hotpot restaurant. This was a fun experience of cooking our own food in a soup on a burner on the table...not exactly relaxing but freshly cooked! Ian spent most of the time deheading shrimps for the kids and we cooked several different types of meat, passing on the tripe, funnily enough.
On Friday morning, we awoke to bright sunshine again and decided to make the most of it. We had several options of great sights to see, but chose the YuHuatai Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs. It was an amazing scenic area which went on for miles and miles, but luckily as we entered we found a buggy type thing which we paid a whole 10RMB per person for and it took us all around the “park”. We were able to hop on and off at various sites and chose to view the long walk around the monuments and then
go inside for a touch of shade inside the Memorial Hall. We got some great photos so you can appreciate the sights. We went for one last swim before going to a Brauhaus for dinner. Very traditional Chinese food.......Bavarian sausages accompanied by a Filipino couple singing background music, including Robbie Williams, The Carpenters and Abba! We had a lovely evening and then mum and I went for a quick pedicure on the 29th floor where our nails were cut by a man with a chisel!
This morning we filled our boots at breakfast before heading off home. This time, the train journey was much less exciting and we caught our midday train with minutes to spare in the rain of Nanjing. We were all pleased to get home and had a relaxing afternoon at home.
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