last day in Shanghai 1/25/18

It snowed so much today, well it was a lot for Shanghai. We decided to go to the aquarium to avoid the cold. The aquarium was huge and had the largest jellyfish display I have ever seen. The Shanghai Aquarium is also home to the world's longest underwater tunnel. I was pretty excited at first however once we got into the tunnel we discovered that you had to stand on this moving walk way that moved super slow. It about half an hour to get through the tunnel on the moving walkway. After the aquarium we went to the Super Brand Mall to lunch at their food court. It took us a long time to find the food court because there were two separate basements and you had to make sure you were on the right escalator that led to the food court. After lunch we tried to go home on the subway but it was so crowded due to the weather that we ended up waiting an hour at the mall before trying to head home. At night it was still snowing so Nick, dad and I walked down to the Bund to take pictures. While we were there we built a snowman and everyone stopped to take pictures . These two Chinese dudes saw us building it and decided to build their own. They must have been artist or something because their final snowman was something that resembled Pikachu.

1/26/18
 Today we woke up very early to get to the train station. We took the high speed train over to HuZhou, it was about an hour long ride. The train was very nice and fast. We then took a cab over to our hotel which looked like a large donut on the lake, it was a very nice, fancy hotel. Mom and I were very tired so we took a nap. When we woke up we went to go get lunch in one of the hotels many restaurants. We went to the fancy Chinese one. Then we went to the hot springs that were a part of the hotel. The hot springs were very nice and fancy. They had giant bags in the water that dyed the water colors and made it smell nice, it was basically a tea bag. Then we went back to the hotel and had dinner at their buffet bar. Dad had cold shrimp from the buffet and got sick!

1/27/18
Today we left the Sheraton ( the donut hotel ) and went to NanXun. While we were waiting for the cab to come pick us up Nick and I built a huge snowman in front of the hotel. NanXun is this cute little river town that is over five hundred years old. We had a little bit of difficulty and it took us a while to find our hotel, but once we did it was very nice. The hotel was set up like an old room with canopy beds. It was so old it had its own well. They also had a hot springs. We had lunch and dinner at two different restaurants but ended up ordering and eating the same things- local greens, fish omelet, egg fried rice, minced pork wrapped in tofu skin.

1/28/18
Today we had a full day at the river town. We woke up at around nine and went to have breakfast at a famous noodle place. Then Dad, Nick and I went to go find an ATM, it took a little while and we had to stop a few people on the streets to ask for directions. When we got back to the hotel we went into their hot springs which were extremely nice and hot. Then we walked around the oldest part of the town and got lunch. We spent a couple hours warming up at the hotel before heading out again for dinner. We went to a place that claimed they had pizza but in reality it was meat and cheese on pita bread. The restaurant was a very cute coffee shop that also sold pizza. Mom found these awesome pineapple bars that are really good and Nick and I ended up eating around 20 of them.


1/29/18
Oh man today was an adventure. We had to wake up early because we were leaving NanXun, so we got up, had breakfast, and got packed up. There was a miscommunication when getting a cab and we ended up with someone who was like the private driver for the hotel. He took us to the train station where we waited around for about an hour. The train ride was around 15 minutes long so we didn't have too long to ride. We got off in DeQing and found a cab to take us up to MoGanShan. The cab was very small but the driver was determined to fit all of our stuff in , we ended up getting two cabs each for 200 yuan. They took us up the mountain and dropped us off outside our hotel. We were a little confused at first because there was no one around and it looked like our hotel was closed. But we followed the signs anyway and started walking up the steps. About halfway up a lady appeared and started asking us why we were there and we explained that we were staying in the hotel. She then informed us that the hotel was not open and then called someone. She left us and then a man walked around the corner and looked at our papers for our reservation and then started making a bunch of phone calls. Then two more people came out and started taking our bags so we just followed them. They led us into the lobby of a different hotel to stay warm while they figured out what to do with us. We stayed there for about twenty minutes while everyone was calling people trying to figure things out. Then a man came to get us and led us to a very nice dining room where they gave us a huge lunch. They gave us about 7 different dishes.  After lunch the first guy that came to help us led us up the mountain to another random hotel that he said belonged to his friends. Now we are staying there and it is very nice and pretty.