Woke up in the morning, did some research on the public transport routes using mapbar and set off... took some pics of the area outside my apartment coz my mom requested for them... haha... more pics on my online album http://picasaweb.google.com/celest8787/MidAutumnFestivalHolidayTravelling#
before setting off...
the guardhouse at the main entrance
our 1st stop 四方城… we were supposed to take a bus, alight then walk to another bus stop to change to another bus… but after alighting from the 1st bus, we were asking passers-by for directions to the other bus stop, but apparently, it was super far! Omg… stupid mapbar, cheat our feelings! In the end, we found out that there was another bus going there from a bus stop quite a distance away, so we started wondering if we should just cab down or still try to make our way there by bus… coz each bus ride costs 1 or 2 rmb(air-con), so for 2 bus rides, dat’ll be 2x2 =4rmb/pax. And for 2 of us, it’ll be 4x2 = 8rmb… cabbing to our destination directly from my place would have cost us ard 9rmb… -_-“ sigh… in the end, we decided to just try to take another bus anyway, coz after all, we had already taken one trip… at that bus stop, we saw a very pro-military girl...
finally, we hopped onto the next bus, on our way to 四方城… but guess what, luck was so not on our side… we MISSED THE STOP!! Argh… apparently, the buses here don’t have bells for passengers to press to alert the driver that you wanna alight, and from what I observed, an indication for the driver to stop at a stop is when he sees a passenger moving towards the exit before the bus reaches the stop, or when he doesn’t notice, people will shout “停！停！”otherwise, the driver will just zoom past the stop unless there’s someone flagging the bus at that stop… so well, the both of us were slow to get up from our seats to indicate our intentions to alight, so the bus driver juz zoomed past our stop… >_< sigh… we then alighted at the very next stop and proceeded to walk further downwards first instead of backwards since there was 明孝陵(the ming emperor’s tomb) further up ahead, so we decided to visit that place first before walking back to find our 四方城… -_-“
明孝陵 turned out to be rather plain, coz quite a few buildings were under renovation… and to enter the actual tomb area of the ming emperor, we would have to buy an admission ticket for 60rmb… but since we were already there, we kinda thought that we should perhaps just pay the $ to check out the place, since it’s supposedly quite a popular tourist destination… but suddenly, I recalled that there would be a nanjing trip sometime in oct, organised by our shanghai jiaotong uni teacher… and I wondered if we might be visiting 明孝陵 then… we decided to ask wen jie, one of our ntu tkd seniors, who just participated in gip china last sem, to find out which places they actually visited in nanjing during their nanjing school trip… true enough, he told us that the school did bring them to 明孝陵 and 中山陵(sun yat sen’s mausoleum), which meant that we shouldn’t waste our $ going there now! Very fortunately, we thought of checking with him before buying our tickets to both places, or it’d have been such a waste of $! *phew* some luck on an unlucky day... =)
明孝陵 ming emperor's tomb museum
as we were looking for directions, we noticed an all-important cultural relic... THE toilet... wonder if it had been used by the ming emperor too... >_<
here's THE toilet for you... =P
at the ming tomb...guess what we saw... a couple taking wedding photos at the TOMB!! omg... wat a fantastic choice of location... -_-"
absolutely romantic... >_<
as we left 明孝陵, we passed 宋美岭别墅 (song mei ling's villa)... if i'm not wrong, THINK song mei ling was the wife of jiang jie shi… I suck at history so dun take my word for it… but anyway, we didn’t enter the villa, just took a pic of the place from the outside coz I’ve actually visited the villa previously, and we’d probably be going there with the jiaotong pple anyway… we walked back to find our 四方城 but the stupid stone wall just couldn’t be found… in the end we gave up after so much walking… the whole area was on a hill… so we kept climbing uphill and downhill… tiring… >_<
obviously too tired after the morning's activities...
pics of 新街口 xin jie kou
cool athletes of the beijing olympics 2008 we saw inside a shopping mall!! =P
lunched at 口味鸭血粉丝汤, where I also had the duck’s blood vermicelli with my mom previously… nice… =) we tried some skewered octopus too, which was alrite, rather salty (as usual)…
next stop, shopping at Walmart!!! Haha… William was there for 1 ultimate purpose: to get a BOLSTER! Haha… he’s been surviving in shanghai without a bolster in ages coz it seems impossible to find one there! De one & only place I’ve seen in both shanghai and nanjing that sells bolsters is walmart! I love walmart… haha… =P oh, but coz we realized that we would still be walking around quite a bit, so we decided to come back again on Monday to get the bolster just before he leaves for the train station directly… after doing some misc shopping, we left to check out other shopping malls around… saw this place that reminded me of bugis… lotza small shops selling clothes, accessories, small little items, etc… slightly dark with some neon lightings… there was a food court downstairs too…
next stop: 夫子庙 confucius temple… we took a train from 新街口 to 三山街, just 3 stations away… & from 三山街, it was a 10mins walk to 夫子庙… apparently, there were beautiful lightings at 夫子庙 coz of maf! They had some really beautiful floating structures on 秦淮河 qinhuai river, which runs along the 夫子庙 area… from what I recall of what the tour guide said on my last trip to china, the 秦淮河 used to separate 2 vastly different cultures on the 2 banks of the river… one side was for all the 书生 scholars, while the other was the red-light district! Haha… but today, both sides are just filled with tourist-infested shops… haha…
夫子庙 confucius temple
at 夫子庙, there was a food street too! called 夫子庙美食广场… There were quite a lot of stalls selling food and snacks from various parts of china… they had some stalls selling satay, like those at 南京西路 (west nanjing rd) and many other types of 小吃…
pic of some shops at 夫子庙 confucius temple in the day...
cute golden mouse! =P
夫子庙美食广场 confucius temple food street
some of the food we tried at the 夫子庙美食广场 confucius temple food street...
武汉牛肉豆皮 (wuhan beef beancurd skin) - looks like fried carrot cake rite? but itz actually some glutinous rice wif very pathetically few tiny cubes of beef... oily & ricey... fail... =(
cant rmb wat dis was called... smth like 炸鱼饺 i think... (fried fish "dumpling"?) it was rather tasteless... just like some kinda fried bing.. a lousier version of roti prata... haha...
skewered shark's meat & 狗不理包子 (direct translation: "dog dont care pau"), which was basically just bak pau (pork bun)
for more pics of the food there, visit my online album instead: http://picasaweb.google.com/celest8787/MidAutumnFestivalHolidayTravelling#
we came across this very pro uncle making some malt candy... you spin this rotating handle on a wooden board and he'll will use hot malt candy to make the figurine of whichever animal that the handle points at! cool! =P
malt candy goldfish! =P
malt candy butterfly...too pretty to be eaten!! =P
we also saw many shops selling the famous local food product – 盐水鸭(“saltwater duck”), which is basically duck that has sorta been marinated in saltwater so it tastes rather salty, but goes pretty well with rice. There were shops selling 雨花石 yuhua stone, colourful stones representative of nanjing coz of the famous landmark yuhuatai (where we visited the next day), as well as 紫砂壶(“zi sha hu”, a type of sand-fired teapot), which has this special characteristic of retaining the flavour of tea brewed in it over time. So the longer the pot has been used, the stronger the tea flavour retained in it, and the lesser the tea leaves required to get that same level of thickness or flavour in future... so supposedly, 紫砂壶 teapots which have been used for long periods of time can cost exorbitant amounts… beware of lotza imitation 紫砂壶s around though, they may look purple in colour, but they might just be artificially coloured… my Chinese friend suggested a way to test if a 紫砂壶 is made of the authentic material... request for the seller to boil some water using the 紫砂壶 before you buy it... If the colour doesn’t run, it should be the real 紫砂壶, which is definitely worth much more than some artificially coloured teapot… >_<
night scenery of 夫子庙 confucius temple
for more pics, visit: http://picasaweb.google.com/celest8787/MidAutumnFestivalHolidayTravelling#
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