The long walk..

I only had a day and a half in Nanjing so I had to decide on what to do with my time. There is a large national park area in Nanjing that is host to many of it's historical sites and after being in big cities for a few days, day 1 was an easy choice. It is called Zhongshan or Purple Mountain National Park. I read an interesting book before I left home for China called 'Socialism is great' which is an autobiography about grwoing up in China in the eighties, and the author talks about climbing Purple Mountain and what it means to the local Chinese.
I got Chinese buffet breakfast with my room at the uni and it was good to give that a try and try some Chinese breakfast. I couldn't deal with congee first thing though..
After that I had a bit of a brain snap. I had already decided that I wouldn't muck around as I had limited time, and that I would ideally hire a bike and get to the park early. Apparently the park is really big and there was lots of ground to cover so I wanted to save my strength. That was the plan, but after walking for an hour I realised that I was nearly at the Yangsee river which was the wrong direction to the park... For some reason now that I'm in China I feel the need to keep walking/moving... maybe its all the people around?
I jumped in a taxi and it took me to the mausoleum of Dr Sun Yat-sen. He's the guy I first learnt about in HK and is credited as being responsible for freeing China from Monarchy and starting the Republic in the early 1900's.
I was in a bit of a grumpy mood but decided to interact with a few people to help fix my mood, there were plenty of Chinese tourists to take photos for and I met a schoolkid which then turned into meeting all the schoolkids in his group.
From the mausoleum I caught a shuttle bus to the 'scenic area' of the mountain. There are many things to look at here including an amazing beamless hall that was built in the 1300's with no wood or beams, some temples and a pagoda. From here (which is the right hand area on the wikipedia map) I started walking back towards the mausoleum (central area) and then decided to follow a path up the side of the mountain instead. (you can see what I thought I was walking up next to the blue roofs)
The shape of the Purple Mountain is like a dragon and as I headed up it started to rain. It was quite steamy in the rain but I pushed on as there were a few sites above the mausoleum that I wanted to visit. The higher I went the more dragons breath (clouds) moved in and the less visability I had - soon I couldn't see more than about 20 metres ahead. It was tough going but all of a sudden I found myself at the top of the mountain - where the cable car tower is located which is on the left hand side of the map! (I kept thinking of Miranda from Picnic at Hanging Rock) It was quite strange to find myself right across the top of the mountain - everything was shut on top of the mountain because the visability was so poor and the cable car was shut down too but it also meant that there were very few other people up there which was a nice change!
I visited a few sites on top of the mountain before I thought I better start heading down, as time was getting away from me. It was a long walk down and again my directions didn't quite work to plan. I tried to head down into the Ming tombs area (on the left of the map - below the cable car) but after a long walk and it starting to get dark I found myself at the entrance to the park on the very far right of the map! It was amazing to come out and see large sections of the Nanjing city walls which are 5 stories high, still in place.
We had been warned not to try to get a cab between 5 and 7 and it was about 5.45 so I thought I would head in the general direction of the university. It was interesting being on the street at peak hour and again before I new it, I was not far from the uni. I remembered a foot massage place that I found in a lane way when I was wandering around last night, so I headed for it as my feet were pretty sore. 1hour foot massage with a pedicure was awesome (and so cheap) so I managed to get a quick bit to eat and stagger home to rest my little feet! Looking at maps I must have covered well over 12 kms for the day which seems silly with bikes and cheap taxis - but none of these things were easily available. Regardless it will all be good training for hiking in Leaping Tiger Gorge later in my trip!