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Packed our bags to say goodbye to Beijing. The subway got us to the train station, it is near the airport, so it was the reverse of our journey a few days before.
The Beijing train station is huge, easily the size of a midsize US airport. There were at least 24 tracks, and the tracks were 2-3 levels above ground.
The engineering that went into this place was pretty astounding.
We got some pastry snacks for the train ride in the station, we noticed the fresh made stuff is DRASTICALLY less expensive than pre-packaged, the pastries were between 6-12CNY, but when you went accross the way to the packaged snacks area suddenly you were paying 28CNY for the mass-market version.
When going through security we showed our ticket to the guard, asking where to go, and he pointed up. We went up, walked around, and went back down thinking we were supposed to go around a certain point. unfortunately going down meant we left the secure area, so we went back through, and the guards laughed a little.
We eventually found our train, and our seat. These high speed trains are pretty great, definately on par with the high speed trains of Japan. The train, and line was designed to handle 380km/hr, but they decided 300km/h was fast enough, and actually more efficient. It is over 750 miles, and took about 6 hours. There were attendants walking around with snacks, as well as trays of food for purchase. There were toilets, trash, and a hot water dispenser in every car.
It was pretty swanky, we got the 2nd class tickets and the seats were slightly larger than US domestic flights, and all the other passengers were normal people, some kids, but no tantrums or crying children it was an easy trip.
The views outside were pretty interesting. Much of the route looked alot like middle america, big flat areas, with farmland as far as you can see in either direction. But unlike middle america, threa are random assortments of monstrously large apartment buildings sprouting out of no where. And I mean middle of no where, its like, if Manhattan, KS or Baraboo WI had 5, Fifteen Story apartment buildings in it. These tiny towns didnt appear to have enough jobs to support the 10,000 people that would be living in these complexes. On top of that, it appeared as though many of them were empty, entire buildings with no lights on, no shades down, no laundry hangng. It was eerie.
The Shanghai station is a little out of town so we didnt really see much on the way in via subway. When we popped up out of the subway near our hotel, we saw that Shanghai is indeed a modern metropolis. We got to our hotel, and we were greeted with a cup of tea. They also saw that i left a note in the hotels.com remarks section, asking for a high floor, so they gave us a room on the top floor.
This place is pretty great, here is the view from our room.
We did some research, and found a Szechuan place. This place had a similar menu to the Grandmas place, a big book with pictures, and a checksheet you order on. We had crushed spicy cucumber again, a dish of noodles, a basket of fried mushrooms, and a pork dish on a bed of pumpkin and millet. It was all pretty good, The pork meal was very interesting, the pumpkin calmed alot of the heat that is inherent in Szechuan food.
We wandered home and I passed out very quickly, while laura watched whatever was on HBO.
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