Nanjing

Today, we attempted to tallk a walk to visit some old Nanjing walls. From the map, we just needed to head east on Zhongshan road. We would pass a view of the metro stops, and then make it there. So, we headed out on Zhongshan, saw a few metro stops, but then got to train tracks. Huh? Well, it turns out, we were at the intersection of two Zhongshan roads. The one we wanted was "Zhongshan East Rd", but we were on "Zhongshan" road. D'oh! Since we were already far north, we decided to continue and ended up heading towards the Yangtze river.

We walked along a road where they are building a new subway line. At first, we ended up in an industrial port area. No good view there. So we walked through a neighborhood that actually looked Chinese (instead of "Chino-western"). Then we got to the area under the bridge. We saw a lot of people walk towards the river bridge, so we started to walk. We were told that we needed to pay 15 RMB. (Though it looked like only 7 on the sign.) We still saw lots of other people just walk through, so it seemed a little weird. They did tell us we could walk out another way to the river. As we were walking out, a lady told us that we could just walk around and enter at another entrance without paying. The Chinese approach to rules. We walked around there and saw a bunch of people going through that entrance. At the end of the street we found a place where we had a great view the river without going through the park, so all was good.

On the way back, we followed the train tracks. At one time there was a set of stairs to climb up to "something" (a train lookout and guard?) There was a little back path that lead down, that eventually took us back. At the top, we tried to ask a guy for directions. He told us it was a long way, and we should go back by the bridge and take a bus. At least, we think that is what he said. We were in a walking mood, so we just continued walking. (We also were not sure what bus to take or even how to take it.)

On the way back, we stopped at some streat vendors. I got some doughy-taroy thing that was priced by the kilo and way to expensive. (I'm sure I was ripped off.) Then there was some spicy fried (on the spot) meat and vegetables that were really cheap and good.


In Taiwan nightmarkets, I've had 西瓜牛奶 (Watermelon milk) which is a sweet smothie concoction with ice, milk, watermelon and some secret "stuff". 木瓜牛奶 was the papaya version, and equally yummy. So, I tried to hunt it down in Nanjing. I finally found it at drink shop in Nanjing. It was suspiciously under "healthy drinks". However, I was still ready for something yummy. Alas, they took it really literally. It was simply papaya and milk, lightly blendy (thus, chunky.) Not the filling drink I was hoping for.