Although the hostel was near the city, the location itself was rather interesting. It was pretty much in the middle of nowhere and it looked as though it was in a refurbished dorm building in the middle of an old abandoned college campus. It sure had a lot of “character” but in all honesty, it was a bit bazaar when we were walking around and trying to find our way out of campus. Anyway, the hostel was great – clean, friendly, cheap. We opted for a dorm style room with six beds (co-ed) with clean bathrooms and plenty of storage space for all of our stuff. We dropped our bags and headed out to the city.
We first stumbled up on to the city wall. Years and years ago, most of the main cities in China built city walls around the central area as a form of protection against the enemies. Currently, the majority of the walls have been taken down, but some parts still stand as tourist areas. Well we ventured to the city wall where we wondered in and out of the military caves, botanical gardens and little museums that we built inside the hideaways of the wall (rather interesting feature), and eventually climbed to the top of the wall to overlook the city. I mean, let’s be honest, it is no great wall, but it was still pretty cool.
After the wall, we headed toward the Confucius Temple near the center of the city. Now this was one thing that I actually did do last time that I was in Nanjing (really the only thing), but of course, Amy wanted to see it to. Apparently, they were having a celebration of the anniversary of Confucius’s birthday and the whole thing was decorated completely different than I remember. Last time, it was Spring Festival and it was crazy busy, but thankfully, it was rather empty this time around. Instead of pushing and shoving through the crowd, we actually got to casually walk around and enjoy the temple, which is beautiful. The unfortunate part about the temple is that everything is in Chinese, so I feel like a lot of the important history is lost for me so I don’t exactly know what is going on, but I still enjoy it.
Surrounding the temple are rows and rows of market shops and whatnot, so we wondered around, enjoyed some sticky fruit and street food, before heading back to the hostel. We changed, cleaned up and headed out for dinner to the 1912 district (the huge pedestrian bar/restaurant area). Just as we got out of the taxi, I had said to Amy, “I would really love a foot massage. We should try and find a place…”. Less than 30 seconds later, someone handed us a coupon for 38 RMB off a foot massage. It seemed like fate, so we couldn’t pass it up. The massage was spectacular, and we both nearly fell asleep. Next, of course, we ate at Blue Marlin. The funny thing about that restaurant was it was the only restaurant that we ate at the first time I was there because it was the only thing open during the holiday. Although it was good and everything, by the end of our vacation I never wanted to eat there again. However, I return back to Nanjing and the first restaurant that we eat at is Blue Marlin. In all honesty, the food is good, and it was the only thing that sounded good at the moment. We sat and ate and listened to the live band for a while, and even though they messed up our order three times, the food was good.
That night we crashed and thankfully, no one in our hostel snored (that is the worst!). We slept in the next morning, so we woke up nice and refreshed for our day full of hiking! In the northern area of Nanjing, they have a large mountain range called Zi Jin Shan or Purple Mountains. They are loaded with lots of different hiking trails, and tons of Pagodas, temples and mausoleums and such, and I am pretty sure that we say everything that there was to see on the entire mountain. We bought a day pass to enter the national state park and explored just about every inch of the trails. We saw a beamless hall, Linggu Temple, Linggu Pagoda, the Tombs of Dengyanda, Fanhongxian, and Tan Yankai, Yingchao Temple, The Dr. Sun Yat-sen museum and mausoleum and more.
The Linggu Pagoda was pretty neat. It sat pretty high up on the mountain and we climbed nine floor up to the top. It had a really great view. Poor Amy was cringing a little bit trying to look over the edge, but it was really beautiful at the top.
So this Dr. Sun Yat-sen guy was pretty important… He is known to be one of the greatest leaders of modern China, and revolutionary after assisting with the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty. He based his potical principals on nationalism, democracy and the interst of the people, and he traveled internationally to promote and protect The People’s Republic of China. Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to follow through, and his party soon split and formed an alliance with the communist party, but he made great strides when it came to forming The People’s Republic of China.
Dr. Sun had an entire museum dedicated to his life and the political journey for the people of China. Additionally, there was a GIGANTIC mausoleum built in his honor. Now I must say that when I die, I don’t want my dead body taking up any more space than it has to, no matter how important I become (and I plan on being really important), but this guy basically had a small city built in his honor, and the only purpose it served was to honor him. The main buildings of the mausoleum include the Memorial Archway, the Mausoleum Gate, the Tablet Pavilion, the Sacrifice Hall, and the Coffin Chambers (all in a straight line built going up in the Purple Mountains). It is more than 700 meters from the Archway to the Coffin Chamber with more than 400 steps between the two, 10 terraces and several botanical gardens. Now we trucked all those steps and whatnot to get all the way to the top. It was crazy busy and crowded with people, but once we made it to the Coffin Chamber for the BTV (breath taking view), it was well worth it! We were deep into the mountains, and the sky was nearly clear so we could see a lot of the mountains (pretty rare).
After that day, we were beat so we headed back down the mountain and found ourselves at a small Spanish restaurant near our hostel where we enjoyed a bottle of wine and some delicious food. Again, we crashed by 11:00 that night, knowing that we still had one more day of hiking left before we had to head back. However, the next morning, poor Amy woke up with gigantic blisters on her feet from the previous day of hiking, and she was in a bit of pain so our hike turned into a half hike, half sky lift into the mountains. I can’t say that I was upset about it though, I was pretty sore myself after all the walking, climbing and stairs. The lift was actually pretty neat too. It took us a little more than half way up, but we got to enjoy a beautiful view of the mountains during the slow ride. Once we made it to the end, we hiked the rest of the way to the highest peak of Purple Mountain. Unfortunately, it was not a fabulous day for it L By the time we made it to the top, the sky was so hazy that it was like looking out on a dirty lake. Nonetheless, the hike was nice and it was not too busy.
So I forgot to tell you, earlier that morning before we left the hostel, we had asked about a hot spring nearby. I have been to one before, but we found another one not too far that sounding divine, so we thought we would check it out. The only problem was that it was at least a 100 RMB taxi ride each way plus 150 RMB for the actual hot spring, and since we were ballers on a budget for the week, we wanted to save a little money and take a bus out there instead. The lady at our hostel told us that it would be easy, peasy. She told us where to go, what to say and even wrote down something for us to show to the bus driver…
Ok, so after our hike, we went to the train station (where she told us to go to catch the bus). We asked several different police officers to point us in the right direction of the correct buses; yet, each police officer told us something different. We were getting pretty frustrated, and by this point, it was already after 5, and who knew how long it would take us to actually get there, and we didn’t even know where to go after we got off the bus, so we decided to scrap the hot springs idea and go get full body massages instead (we figured it was comparable).
Our next challenge was jumping on the metro. Ok, I should tell you that the metro system in Shanghai is incredibly simple. You could be an absolute dumby and not speak a lick of Chinese and still be able to manage just fine. I mean, you go in, get your card, go down the stairs and jump on the metro… Nanjing’s metro system is not quite as simple. There is nothing electronic (which is different), everything is mostly in Chinese, and it is extremely complicated to navigate through. Also, because they only have three metro lines (compared to Shanghai’s eleven), they are jam packed full of people pushing and shoving in all directions – which made it even more complicated for us who didn’t even know what direction we were supposed to be going.
We toughed it out, and made it out alive, but I assure you that it was no easy task. I have never been more thankful to be above ground after that! Well anyway, we walked to go and get massages (I can’t complain much except the fact that my masseuse left two huge bruises on my back) and had some cheap Chinese for dinner before heading back to the hostel for the night. We called it in extra early because we needed to be to the train station by about 8 and we were going to give the bus system another go in the morning… however, that turned out the be the worst idea ever!
Again, we asked the lady at the hostel about using the bus, but she had no clue and in fact, she suggested the metro (eff that), but we had a business card from the hostel that specifically said that buses 110 and 134 went to the train station and had stops near the hostel. So we jumped on 134. Once I realized that we were not heading in any kind of direction close to the train station, I began questioning the bus driver. In fact, the bus not only did not go to the train station, but it went in the opposite direction. UGH! Thanks for the information hostel! So in our attempt to save a little money, we ended up on the other side of Nanjing, but crunching for time, so we had to jump in a taxi which ended up costing double what it would have been from the hostel! Well, you live, you learn. China never seizes to amazing, and I am never disappointed by the adventures I set forth on because they never go as planned!
Long story short, we made it to the train station and to our train on time and we made it home to Shanghai. It was funny because when we were boarding the train, Amy was telling me how happy she was to be going back to Shanghai, to our comfortable bubble! It is interesting how much Shanghai has spoiled us! I think it took me several months to realize that, however, Amy has become spoiled a little bit sooner J
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