DAY EIGHT:  Nanjing

Today was our final full day in Nanjing and it was another "lite" day.  The weather has been absolutely wonderful though...it has even warmed up here and remained sunny and dry the whole trip so far.  The temps are in the 60's or so and we are down to light jacket weather.

We only had one quick sightseeing trip today and then back to the hotel and on our own for the rest of the day.  We hopped the bus to go visit Xian Wu park, which consists of a very large lake with some islands in the lake that we could go to.  Again, probably a lot more beautiful in any of the other 3 seasons, but it was still a nice visit and gave us a chance to get out and stretch other than hiking through busy city streets.  Funny thing about Shane, though...even though he is very rambunctious in our hotel room, when we give him the chance to run somewhere, he always wants to be carried.  Oh, our achin' backs!  We now think one of those aluminum baby carrier backpacks would be a good thing to have, but can't find such things for sale here.  An umbrella stroller might help, but there aren't any smooth places where that would work very well, either, so we carry the boy and Dad does a lot of sitting Shane on his shoulders and neck.

After that quick trip we hiked the city streets and went to McDonald's for lunch.  Shane loved the McNuggets and fries and Mom and Dad -- usually not big on McDonald's -- appreciated the flavor.  We walked through a "free market" where we saw lots of live fish, crabs, and plenty of live eels and lots of raw meat available for sale (including a few unidentifiable entrails on the ground).  We resisted the urge to buy.

After an afternoon nap, Jocelyn had a paperwork appointment where all the families got together to go over and review all the final papers that will be necessary to complete things at the American Consulate offices when we get to Guangzhou.  Then we ended the day with a dinner on the top floor of our hotel in Nanjing (24 stories up).  It was labeled a "European Restaurant," but we think we threw the restaurant staff for a loop because it took them an incredibly long time to get the meal slowly delivered from the kitchen and they seemed quite unorganized.  Example:  After dessert was served, they THEN brought out green salads with dressing, following by little fruit plates.  In the end, we all were fed, and laughed a lot, even though Shane and some of the babies were getting a bit cranky due to how late it had gotten.

Tomorrow, it's off to South China... 

SPECIAL FEATURE ALERT!!!  Click here to download a WAV file where you can hear our Shane's wonderful little voice!

Today's Photo Journal:

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