For the first time in days I got to sleep in. Ahhh, I love this. My bed was comfy and warm, and when I woke up (to Cal calling at the ungodly hour of 9 or something) I just flipped on the TV and immersed myself in English for a while. After another fantastic hot shower, I put on my newly cleaned clothes (it is so nice when someone else does your laundry!) and jumped on the internet for a bit. I talked to my mom who told me to gargle with salt for my newly acquired sore throat (thanks to the Tour of Frozen Darkness as the Yangtze cruise well be known forever more). Then I just lazed around until noon..,. oh and used the hairdryer to finish drying my socks. I didn’t send out my undergarments for cleaning.
After checking out we went up to the Panorama restaurant, which is a bit rotating restaurant at the top of the Holiday Inn building. I haven’t been to a rotating restaurant in ages, so this was kinda cool. The Panorama had a huge buffet of Chinese and Western food. It was fabulous. I had my fill of freshly baked bread, fresh fruit, vegetables, noodles and the like. We spent a leisurely two hours eating our fill and looking out the window at the local environs.
At the end of the meal I asked for a small cup (so I could go an gargle some salt water – see I do listen mom!). The waitress brought back a plastic bag. Umm… not exactly what I was looking for. Never mind. I grabbed my wine glass of lemon water and sprinkled a bunch of salt in it, and just took it with me to the bathroom. I gargled in there and learned that lemon salt water tastes even worse than just salt water. But, at least I had gargled and hopefully that will stave off any worse infection in my throat (the last thing I need is strep which I get every season change).
After brunch we walked around the neighbourhood for a bit. In behind the hotel was a little community. It was great. There were people making sausage (that was hanging in all the windows in town it seemed), chickens running around, kids doing homework out in the cold, men playing cards or mah jong, a playground with exercise equipment, and lots of people walking about doing their business. We also so meat hanging up drying outside, fruit and vegetable vendors and a walled school yard.
We walked through the flower market, which had beautiful flowers and saw vendors with pork, coal and trinkets. So far, this has to be the best part of my trip. It was so nice to wander around and see a real community out and doing things. (One of the reasons why I wouldn’t want to be on the Amazing Race – no time to explore and look around).
Then we went back to the hotel to pick up our bags and got a taxi to the train station. The taxi took a lot longer than we expected… in fact we were really worried about missing our train. This brings me to the Amazing Race portion of the trip.
We dashed out of the taxi, grabbed our bags and ran to the entrance… only wrong entrance, so we ran down the street to the other entrance which had a huge crowd of people in front. We pushed our way through, threw our bags onto the x-ray conveyor belt, grabbed them before they had even made their way out of the x-ray machine, and ran into the terminal. Then I ran up some steps to show my ticket to a woman because we couldn’t figure out where to go. She showed us a door around the corner, and off we ran – down the stairs, around the corner, through a door and into a corridor. Of course our train platform was at the very end. Two minutes until departure…
Gasp, gasp, gasp. Run Forrest run!
We ran down the corridor, ran up the stairs, and then had to run down the length of the train. Run, run, run!
Gag, gasp, cough, gasp.
We jumped onto to train and pushed our way down to our seats. Phew! We made it!
Then we tried to find our seats and discovered that seat assignments are vague. People were sitting in our seats already. As there were two seats empty in the general vicinity of our tickets, we just sat down. Welcome to soft seat class!
Let me start by saying, if I never hear Happy Birthday again, it will be too soon. Some parent had got their kid a toy that played this song electronically and kept pressing the button (or whatever) over, and over, and over again. I wanted to grab that damn toy and wrap it around someone’s neck. Then there were people shouting and yelling and being loud in general. I gave up and just put my iPod on to tune out all the noise, and did number puzzles to idle away the time.
Meanwhile, people were slurping noodles, throwing garbage everywhere and spitting on the floor (see previous comments about Chinese completely destroying things). There were also vendors plying the aisle trying to sell things like pomelos (giant oranges), peanuts, drinks and trinkets. Needless to say the train was a whirlwind mess in less than an hour.
Vendors would come into the train car and shout, which meant everyone looked at them. Then they gave their spiel and by the end everyone was ignoring him or her. One guy was selling socks and was beating and pulling at them with a wire brush. He was also making ppl hold onto one end of the sock while he pulled the other, yanking them out of their seats. It was great showmanship. But alas, after demonstrating all of the qualities of these highly durable socks, no one bought any. If they came in another colour other than gray I might have bought a pair just because the guy was such fun to watch. Interestingly, since everyone had long ago stopped paying attention to the spiel, he just threw the socks at everyone, even if they said they didn’t want them. Then when he went away, the people would look at them, but no one bought any when he came back.
Our four-hour train trip turned into a five hour one. The girl beside me spoke English, which was good, because otherwise we may not have known where to get off. I was worried about Jan because she said she would be there when the train pulled in – which was supposed to be an hour earlier. We walked through exit and she was there waiting for us. It was so good to see her! (It has been about 3 years). Luckily she saw the train was late from the display board, so knew we were coming an hour after we were supposed to be there.
We grabbed a taxi and went to the hotel and checked in. Jan stayed with me so she could have heat (the power in her apartment keeps going out and she is freezing – seems to be a common problem in China, eh?) and we could gab. We talked for a while and then around 11 thought we should get some food. We went upstairs to the hotel restaurant but were told they only had t-bone steak and minestrone soup. I don’t know. Then we tried room service (which is supposed to be 24 hour) but they only had salad available. We didn’t really want any of these things, so we went elsewhere. We found a place next door basically that had heated stone / iron bowls with rice and mystery toppings. We couldn’t read the menu, so for all I know, it was dog that I ate. The bones were kinda small and didn’t resemble anything I had eaten before, so who knows what it was. It was pretty good. I also got some tea, which cost more than the food did! Who would have thought that tea in China would be expensive! The tea leaves were left in the glass too, so it was really strong and bitter. I didn’t really like the tea unfortunately. The food was ok though… better than t-bone and minestrone LOL.
After dinner we just wandered back to the hotel and stayed up gabbing some more until 3am. I’m looking forward to relaxing and gabbing over the next few days!
To see all my pictures from this day, check out my photoblog!
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