Sunday in Nanjing

Sunday we awoke fresh and early, around 10:30, with another full list of things that we needed to get accomplished in order to feel like we took in enough of the sights that comprise Nanjing.

We started with Burger King, and then hopped into a taxi for a quick ride over to the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Museum, one of the sights that we wanted to make sure that we saw. It was quite a sight, amazingly well put together and organized and far more information than you could ever absorb in a quick sightseeing trip. As we mentioned earlier Ben wrote about it in his blog post on Nanjing, and we will agree most everything he said about it - and his photos are better, he took a few in the designated "no photos" area, as did just about every Chinese person that was touring when we were there. The only difference we took is that we read his post first and went in expecting to be bombarded with propaganda, but to us it seems perfectly normal - in fact nothing compared to the way museums seemed to skew facts (again, in our minds) in places like Vietnam. Okay, enough of that talk - enjoy photos of the museum outside:
After close to 3 hours of reading about death, bravery, and other sorts of barbaric stupidness that is generally associated with war we finished up and decided we needed something a little lighter. Two bad strawberry shakes and a long taxi ride later we walked through another gate at the city wall and to Nanjing's large lake and park.
The weather was hazy and it was hot. It wasn't anything that spectacular and as soon as we found another hole in the wall we crossed out of the park and grabbed a taxi back to near the hotel.

A few hours of wandering by the temple and buying a lot of junk in the markets and then we were off to the airport. By junk I mean phone covers and mah jongg sets.

Overall a good trip, we saw most of the highlights and walked far too much. There would be more to see if we went back, but we covered enough to feel good if we never get that chance...