My friend Brittany and I took the metro to Shanghai Railway Station first and then decided to take the metro to Hongqiao Railway Station after realizing that we would have to wait close to 2 hours for the high-speed rail. So we took the train from Hongqiao for about an hour before we arrived at Nanjing. Since we arrived around 9 pm, we took the metro to our hostel since it hasn’t closed yet. It took us awhile to find the hostel since it was behind a row of banks in an apartment-style building. We rested for the night to prepare for a day of exploring.

We woke up around 9:30 am and washed up to get ready for the day. We walked around the area and saw a bunch of stands selling food. We bought red bean soymilk from a stand and ate at a restaurant. After breakfast, we walked out towards the main street to catch a taxi to our first stop, the Purple Mountain.

​​First Stop: Purple Mountain

The taxi driver first thought we weren’t going to hike the mountain, so he drove us to a wrong entrance. Thankfully we were able to explain to him and he drove us to the hiking entrance. The mountain was not purple at all but beautiful purple flowers populated it. Unfortunately for us, the skies were covered by fog so the view wasn’t as spectacular as expected. After hiking up to an observatory, we decided that we wanted to take the trolley down but realized we would have to hike up mountain of stairs for about an hour from two middle-aged women who were making their way down. Luckily we had each other or else I don’t think we would make it up in the shortest amount of time. We finally reached the top and lined up for the trolley.

​​Next stop: Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum

The next place we decided to visit was Sun Yat-Sen Mausoleum, which was in the vicinity of the purple mountain. Even though it was nearby, we still had to take a bus. After arriving, Brittany bought her favorite snack, cotton candy. We walked pass numerous attractions as we made our way to the mausoleum but due to time constraint we couldn’t visit everything there.

​We literally had to climb up more stairs to reach the mausoleum. You can definitely tell this was a tourist spot from the number of people you see. We couldn’t get too close to the mausoleum but we did made a loop around the statue before hiking down the stairs. We bought some small snacks and souvenirs around the area. I also had the chance to write a postcard and send it back home (although it will take about a month).

Last stop: Dinner at Nanjing Da Pai Restaurant

For dinner, we chose to shop around the hostel since there were a few huge malls nearby. I really have to curb my shopping tendencies or else I don’t know how I would bring everything home. We waited on line to eat at Nanjing Da Pai Restaurant, which was a well-known inexpensive chain. Since we were hungry, we ordered quite a bit; we didn’t finish everything but it was super tasty and I wished I got to eat there again.