I decided to combine my 4 days in Nanjing into a multiple parts saga instead of going day by day.

I’ve always known there would be difficulties traveling in China but I didn’t know just how much until we got to Nanjing. We were trying to get to the hotel and somewhat, we got on the wrong train and got lost. When we finally got out of the subway station and into the daylight, I got Google Maps to tell me the hotel is over a kilometer away. Though that’s not very far but when I have to tow a carry-on luggage, a purse, and a backpack in a place with a heat index of 90-degree-Fahrenheit and a humidity of 70%, that 1 kilometer might as well be 10 kilometers.

So, time for our travel companions to step up to bat.

It turned out my mom’s cousins were just like us – don’t know much about hailing taxis on an app. After much tinkering and tapping on her phone, my mom’s cousin M finally got us a taxi to the hotel. Even with the taxi, it still took sometime to locate the hotel since there weren’t any signs to help us locate the hotel.

After resting for an hour or so, it was decided that it was time to go out.

Using her newfound knowledge, cousin M hailed a cab to take us to Zhongshan harbor. Before this trip, the only things I knew about Nanjing were that it was the old capitol of China and that the Japanese occupied the city during World War II. So when I stepped out of the cab and saw the harbor was named after my hometown, I was surprised. It turned out there are many things around the city of Nanjing that’s named after the founder of the Republic of China – Sun Yat-sen.

We entered the building, wanted to buy tickets for the ferry to cross the Yangtze River. Before we did that, we had to put our belongings through the x-ray machine and be scanned for explosives. We had to do that, too, before we could ride the escalator to the actual station.

Paying for the ferry also proved to be a challenge as neither my mom nor I have ever used this method payment in the US. It wasn’t difficult but as always, my mom had decided to be one to complicate things. Thankfully, we did get through and were on the way across the river to Pukou harbor on the other side of the river.