We were up early and packed and ready to go with two hours to wait! Definitely ready to blow this joint.
We've made some memories here but we are glad to leave the Jian Guo hotel - not the nicest place, but it definitely could have been worse. Internet SUCKED here and I really got behind on blogging because of it! :(
I took a few pictures of our rooms before we left. I wish I'd thought to do this right when we got into the rooms but I never did remember that and all the hotel room pictures are a mess!
This was "My Room" along with S and G. There were two beds in each room (about full-size each) that had been pushed together for us. My room also had the crib for G which she would only nap in. This was taken from the entry way. The window looks out onto the pond/courtyard area at the center of the hotel which was very pretty.
This is the bathroom. It was directly on the right after entering the room.
Another shot of the bathroom - what's behind the bathroom door.
Josh and the big kids had an identical/mirror image room.
We checked out of the hotel without incident and made our way back to the airport.
Our guide helped us get our boarding passes and check our bags. She also led us through the airport and helped us find the security entrance. We said goodbye to Celine, made it through security without much problem and finally found our gate.
We just about missed our flight when Josh took C and S on a "hike" right before boarding. They boarded really early though. He had all the tickets and passports with him. We made it ok, but I was a hot mess until we got on the plane!
We few Hainan airlines for our trip to Nanjing. It was G's first flight and she did great! She sat on my lap the whole time and never cried or seemed afraid. We were all hungry and hadn't eaten lunch but we only had junk food on the plane - some chips and cupcake things we found in the airport. The flight was only about 2 hours so I figured we could all make it.
We made it into around 4 pm. Nanjing is HOT!!! It is supposed to be 106 tomorrow! Yikes!
We made it off the plane and got all our bags from baggage claim and found our guide: Denise. She is very nice.
Our hotel in Nanjing was the Holiday Inn. Holiday Inn's back home aren't what I would consider a super nice hotel but this one was pretty high-end. It was actually connected to a huge mall which was very convenient for getting groceries and meals. It also had awesome internet!!! Yay! We had two connecting rooms, one with a king sized bed and two cribs and then one with two queen-ish sized beds. The TV's had way more channels and even had HBO and Discovery in English! The kids were beyond excited to have an English channel. We watched lots of Discovery Channel here!
After getting all our bags in the room and settled a little we braved the mall for dinner. It wasn't the best experience but we got fed so that was good. The restaurant obviously hadn't had many parties the size of ours and didn't quite know what to think about us. They had one waiter that spoke a little bit of English so he got stuck with us. We kept asking if they had bottled water and he would nod and bring us cups of obviously NOT bottled water. We asked again and he nodded and brought us a pitcher of obviously NOT bottled water. We were very thirsty through that meal! G and S were very TIRED and ready for bed too so it was not a quiet meal! We asked for some napkins and the waiter brought out a package of Kleenex looking stuff and tried to give us one at a time! He tried to charge us for each individual "napkin" (think really cheap toilet paper) and Josh just took the package from his hands and gave him the money. China is crazy about their napkins. Very few places offer them. Are the Chinese just really neat eaters or something? I guess we're just spoiled, wasteful Americans, but we have 5 children here and I'm SURE someone's going to spill something. We ended up bringing our own to everywhere else!
Anyway, we got fed and all made it back to the hotel room in one piece. We all slept well that night!
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