We woke up bright and early for our sight seeing day. The first place we went to was the Nanjing City Wall. It was CRAZY hot and humid. We were all soaked by the time we had walked from the van to the entrance.
We were not looking forward to another city wall tour but we really needed to get out of the hotel room so we went anyway.
These are the original doors to the Wall, they've only been repainted. So HUGE!
There were lots of tunnels where the soldiers would hide for when their enemies entered the courtyard. The tunnels were lots cooler than the outside air. There were several that had a few museum-like displays but most of them were empty.
This tunnel held a map of the original City Wall. It's not completely intact any more but pieces of it are still standing.
The cool thing about this wall is that each brick maker stamped his name into each and every brick. This was so that if the brick didn't hold up they knew who to blame. Nice, huh? It was pretty cool to walk on the wall and see all the imprints though. Hundreds of years old and still there.
Here is another model of the Wall - what it looked like in its prime. The big buildings are no longer there. The big ramps are there though and we walked up and down them. With three strollers. Not easy.
One of the tunnels on the upper level was a buddhist prayer site. It wasn't really a temple but people come to pray there and there is a huge statue of a buddha there too.
(It was dark in this tunnel so forgive the noisy photo - very high ISO needed to get the exposure.) The kids were fascinated by this case full of money. Especially that the dragon had a perfectly rolled bill in his mouth. C could not figure out how someone got it there! Kinda funny!
The little dragon is known as 'Pishu'. He is the youngest son of the dragon and kind of the mascot for Nanjing. He is said to eat anything and everything and never poop so he is always happy. Why they say that, I don't know. But he was everywhere and our guide was constantly pointing him out.
One of the tunnels held a tribute to the builder of the City Wall. I can't remember the whole story but thought it was fairly interesting at the time. There are so many details to all the stories the guides tell us I don't know how they remember them!
Our guide tried to show M how to use this abacus and there was some system to it but I couldn't even figure it out after watching her. It was some crazy system that made no sense to me either!
Then we climbed up those ramps. Steep ramps. Very uneven bricks (to keep the carts from sliding down them). Super hot. HARD.
Once we got to the top we had quite the view. Our guide even pointed out our hotel.
It was much wider on the top of the wall than it was in Xi'an.
This guy spent the majority of his time out of the stroller running, as usual. It was so crazy hot though, I don't know how he does it!
After we got back down the wall our guide gave us the option of going back to the hotel or visiting a jade factory. The other adoptive mom in our group and I had the same idea and asked, at the same time, "Is the factory air conditioned?" She said yes, so we said let's go!
Nanjing is not known for its jade but it is known for its carving. They get the jade from other provinces. There were some very beautiful pieces and some very old ones too.
This peacock was so cool.
We looked for a tiger pendant for E but they weren't offering us a very good deal and ended up not buying anything. Plus, E was having a major meltdown and we were just ready to leave.
We went back to the hotel and Josh took the 4 bigger kids swimming while I stayed back in the room with the two little girls.
We ended up at Papa John's for dinner. It was GOOD!
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