There is an organized taxi stand, so we hop in the one that's pointed out to us for a long ride to our hotel. In my broken Chinese, I manage to make the taxi driver understand the name of the street that our hotel is on. Unfortunately, he lets us out at one end of the street, not in front of the hotel. Fortunately, he lets us out directly underneath a sign for our hotel pointing down the street so we don't feel too lost! After a couple of false starts (you must understand that there are no street signs in pinyin so we aren't entirely sure which is the correct street), we make it to the hotel. It's on an inner courtyard so not actually visible from the street. This is a real Chinese neighborhood, probably not a place where a lot of Westerners generally stay.
After an interminable check-in process (it's always like this because they have to photocopy our passports and so on), which also includes our figuring out that we have to pay in advance so for four nights we have to put down a 1000 yuan deposit, we get into our rooms. Since this is a JinJiang Inn like the one we stayed in during orientation in Changsha, we feel right at home! However, the beds aren't as comfortable as the ones in Changsha. I'm guessing that's because their clientele is mostly Chinese. FYI, JinJiang Inn is a great budget hotel chain in China but not a full-service hotel as one that caters to Westerners would be. Don't expect to find someone who speaks fluent English!
Suzanne and Christa are only in Nanjing for one day (they're going to Shanghai tomorrow), so they peel off to explore on their own. Tara and I find a great street-food stand with lots of vegetables so we hunker down for lunch (tomatoes, cucumber, carrots, potatoes, lotus, and rice) at a make-shift table. After lunch, we hit the artisans' market in the Heaven Dynasty Palace complex. A real bazaar of jade, ivory, netsukes, ceramics, teapots, stamps and so forth. I find a wonderful terra cotta teapot which I get for 100 yuan (about $15) after bargaining the vendor down from 200. My facility with numbers in Chinese is definitely getting better. We also find some beautiful Chinese stamps, the perfect souvenir: inexpensive, lightweight and easy to transport!
Another great quote by Tara:
Janet, after leaving market with teapot wrapped in newpaper: "Let's drop these things off at the hotel so we can wash up. I don't like newsprint on my hands."
Tara: "I don't like China on my hands!"
After this little junket, we decide that our first order of business needs to be buying train tickets for the trip back to Zhuzhou on Saturday. So we ask the hotel where we can find a ticket agent and successfully follow the directions to Hanzhong Road. It's a fairly long walk but we are happy to have found it. Then we are unhappy to discover that there are no sleeper seats left for Saturday night on the two trains to Zhuzhou. Aarrrrgghhh! This system of not being able to buy train tickets until 5 days before your travel date is ridiculous, compounded by the fact that all 1.2 billion people in China travel during this week. There aren't even any soft seats available. So after deciding that we definitely do not want to sit on a hard seat for 16 hours back to Zhuzhou, we walk over to the counter for airplane tickets where we spend 970 yuan to get a one-way ticket to Changsha on Saturday. Fortunately, the cashier accepts my foreign credit card.
Feeling much poorer, we leave the ticket agent and walk to the bookstore mentioned in Lonely Planet guide to buy an English-Chinese map of Nanjing. It's actually a straight shot down the street we're currently on but that doesn't mean it's easy to find. After a very, very, very long walk, and after crossing under a huge intersection via a vast underground mall (we have been instructed to take the Exit 8 from this complex, which includes the metro!), and after asking a few more people for directions, we finally manage to locate the bookstore. And they do have the maps we're looking for. And they also have books in English! So I indulge in a few of those, managing to limit myself to three only because I will have to schlep them back to Zhuzhou in my suitcase: The American Boy, by Andrew Taylor; The Opposite of Fate, a memoir by Amy Tan; and The Good Earth, by you-know-who. I figure I should read this again while in China. (NB: Saw two books by Luanne Rice: Crazy in Love and Summer of Roses.) Also, English language books are "expensive" in China (that is to say, they cost about the same as they do in the U.S.).
By this time, we are exhausted and hungry and lost (not really) in Nanjing. So we check the LP guide and it turns out there's an Italian restaurant (Bella Napoli) not far from the bookstore so we make our way there. I have Spaghetti Bolognese and Tara has Spaghetti Carbonara, served by Chinese waitresses! We wash it down with Diet Coke. And we use forks and pasta spoons! Ahh, a wonderfully American dinner! Taxi back to hotel and crash.
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