Sunday, June 26, 2011
FREE DAY IN NANJING
Today we did not have a guide, so we decided to explore Nanjing
on our own to see what we could find to do. It turns out our
hotel is directly above a huge shopping mall complex with
everything imaginable, including a grocery store , theater, and
play area. We were very excited to discover a few familiar
restaurants, including a KFC, Subway, and Papa Johns. So far the
hotels we have been in have had very little to offer in the way
of Western cuisine, so eating has been quite an adventure.
Popular buffet items have included such things as duck with
caterpillar fungus ,which believe it or not is tastier than it
sounds. However, once the novelty wore off we found ourselves
craving a taste of home, and I have never appreciated those
golden arches quite so much as I did today.
After checking out the mall, we decided to head further into the
heart of the city, where things were a little less
commercialized and had a distinctly more local flavor. We ended
up in the marketplace area which surrounded the Confucious temple
, where we discovered a riverfront area that ran through the
center of the city. Street vendors were selling various local
items, and we shopped for some items for Callie to have from her
province. We purchased tickets for a riverboat ride and boarded
a boat for a beautiful tour of the city that was narrated
entirely in Chinese, so I’m sure we missed the historical
aspects of the tour. The ride began in the center of the
marketplace area and stopped at a beautiful garden area where
the majority of the passengers got off, but we decided it would
be best to remain on the boat until it returned to where we had
started, since we had no idea how to get back to the hotel from
wherever we were. After going to the walls of the city and
turning around, we did eventually end up back where we began. I
spent most of the ride taking pictures of the beautiful scenery
we passed along the way. In fact, I was so engrossed in the
scenery that I forgot to take very many pictures of the kids, so
I’ll share with you some of the sights we saw along the way
instead.
Don’t worry, there will be considerably more people
pictures tomorrow, since tomorrow is CALLIE DAY (or SCOOBY DAY,
as Maili calls it)! |
Downtown Nanjing
Maili and Holt at the River
Boat ride down the river |
