Day 3- Shanghai to Nanjing

The next day we met our original  guide in the morning and checked out the Yu Yang Gardens which was a 400 year old gardens. It was just packed with plants, murals, buildings and history to see. Our guide was great in explaining the significance of many of the items and we got thee chance to get our family name carved into a jade stamp in Chinese (jade is very big there as it’s thought to bring prosperity and we learned that children would also have their own stamp to use at school as they were learning to write their name and to put their name on their papers.)

After the gardens our guide took us to the train station as our next stop was Nanjing where Bailor’s orphanage was. The train was great. It was a bullet train so we covered the distance to Nanjing in about 2 hours. When we arrived we met our Lifeline Guide, Nancy, and she and driver took us to our hotel. Nanjing City was a little older than Shanghai, but seemed very familiar as it’s streets are lined with sycamores and it seems similar to Chicago in the downtown area. Our hotel was great and had a multistory mall underneath it so you didn’t have to go far for food and shopping needs including basic groceries. We also quickly learned where the McDonalds was (more on McDonalds adventures later). We met the other couple that would also be meeting their child for the first time on the same schedule as us and received a tour of the mall. The tour ended with, of all things, pizza. I really think that all of us were looking forward to some authentic Chinese food, but our guide had it in mind that all Westerners want pizza for their first meal so we ended up having pizza at Mr. Pizza. The toppings sounded interesting, but essentially we had a sausage pizza with a side salad. :-) Then to bed because the next day was Bailor day or Gotcha Day!