We are the Hudsons: na nananana nananana nanana nanana, Nanjing!

So Brian had a week long trip to Mongolia, for those that don't know, he works for a Steel Foundry that makes parts for the mining industry such as mill liners. Typically when he has to visit a customer site he is going to a mine, so the middle of nowhere! It took him a 5 hour train ride from Changzhou to Beijing, then staying the night in Beijing since there are only two non-stop flights from Beijing to Ulaanbaatar airport in Mongolia at 8:30 and 9:30 in the a.m. , flight time was 2.5 hours and then staying the night in Ulaanbaatar because there is only one flight to the mine site each day, then a 1 hour flight the next day to the mine site....meet with the customer for 2 days to problem solve/trouble shoot, then reverse all that back ....total time gone 6 nights! Having him back was nice for me and the kids, we weren't able to video chat for more than 5 minutes because the internet quality was poor. Brian also learned they have a central water heating system for the whole city, so he has cold showers :(

Anyway, he was back and it just so happened the company gave a few days off this week so last minute we decided to travel to a nearby city, Nanjing which used to be the capital of China prior to 1949 is a much larger city than ours. While we found the western population and food not so likely as in the other cities we have visited, Suzhou, Hangzhou and Shanghai it was a nice place to spend a few days. I imagine had the weather been better we would have spent more time outside and seen more, however it rained most of the time we were there, when the weather was nice we were outside! To get from Changzhou to Nanjing it is about a 50 minute train ride, and it was our first experience on the high speed trains going through long tunnels, pop those ears, i needed some gum to chew! Luckily Grace was sucking on her pacifier and Blake didn't seem to mind too much, he is so into Thomas and Friends trains, tunnels and bridges right now he was more excited to be going through the tunnel!

We checked into a hotel, we have found many hotels here are like serviced apartments and for business people that are staying for a long term assignment, we can usually find these with a one or two bedroom which makes it easy when traveling with the kids, they can take naps and we can still watch tv and relax instead of sitting in the dark being silent in a traditional hotel room. This one in particular was the size of our apartment, large kitchen (for China), had a washer and dryer, dish washer, oven, microwave, etc. It was nice :) We stayed right next to where the Youth Olympic Games of 2014 were hosted, you still could see signs for the Olympics around town.

We have a friend that knows Nanjing well, his wife's family is from there, so he was meeting us there and willing to show us around. First stop was to get some local flavor! We tried some of the pork steam buns, they were much sweeter than we had tasted in other restaurants, the place we went to has been making them for over 100 years! Then we went to another restaurant nearby that actually has a Chinese style Opera at night, we didn't stay late enough for this. We ordered some duck here, some pork soup, egg and cedar leaves, sweet pork , and of course watermelon! The food was really
delicious!

Steam Buns...you can watch in the window as they make them.

They also have yellow taxi's in Nanjing which from what i have seen is not very common, most are light green taxis. So we saw many yellow taxis around the city. In addition, many onlookers watched us get into a taxi with two kids, a stroller and a diaper bag. I was sitting in the car with the kids already while Brian was trying to get our things into the trunk with the driver and these were the onlookers....really people, want to help us instead of just staring, i promise it would be more fun that way! LOL Then you have the couples who like to match, I asked our Chinese friend if he and his wife so this and he said yes, it's easier to not lose each other when you go places....hahhaha

"matching couple"

The second day, Brian and Blake went to tour the prior "President's House" and grounds which Grace napped at the hotel and I stayed behind. They said it was really nice. Then we met up with them at Xuanwu Lake, this was a beautiful lake, very large to walk around. We took a few photos there and rented a power boat for $15 for the hour to go across the lake. Blake got to drive the boat with our Chinese friend who almost ship wrecked us after running into a few things, luckily we were driving at low speeds! While on the boat we were worried Blake's hat would fly off from the wind, so Brian put it on his head over his hat, then of course it got knocked off into the water, Blake almost in tears yelling "my hat" over and over as we circled around to pick it up! He then wore his rain jacket with the wet had on top! Around the lake there are some gardens, historic places to see, and there is a smaller version of the Great Wall around the city as well.

After this I went back to the hotel with the kids for a nap and Brian and our friend went to the museum for the Nanjing Massacre memorial hall. In 1937, the Japanese invaded Nanjing for 6 weeks, murdering 300,000 local Chinese men, women and children equaling one death every 12 seconds. You can read a little about it here. Brian described this to me as a very somber experience. Here are some of the photos.

The next day it was pouring rain, we headed to the local aquarium to check out some fish, dolphins, polar bear, seals and sea lions! As we have found in all the aquariums we have visited in China there is a nice displace of jelly fish, and general fish, but what this aquarium offered that was different for us was the Seal and Dolphin show, similar to that of Sea World at home, feeding Seals, and Polar Bears, Emperor penguins and sea lions! They had white wolves, Alaskan Malamutes, and baby wolves too. I am not sure if this is the only place you can feed a polar bear, but it has to be one of the few! For 20 rmb or about $3 you too can go into the polar bear's den and drop food down to him while he swims in the water. He seems to understand this, as soon as Blake and Brian went into the cage at the top, the polar bear was looking in that direction for his food! Blake was also able to feed two seals with the fish put on a pole :) So far in China, Blake has fed an elephant, a large sea turtle, sharks,a polar bear, and seals, pretty cool if you ask me! He also on occasion tries to feed Grace by showing nicely her pacifier into her mouth, lol.