Our Valentine's Day Adventure

Ciao Italia, Nanjing, China for Valentine's Day dinner. Click for more pics...

Sean and I wanted to make our day special so we decided to go to a local city, Nanjing, for our Valentine’s Day dinner. After doing some internet research I found that there is a very good Italian Restaurant, Ciao Italia, right next to the Sheraton Hotel in town. The chef’s name was Giuseppe so I knew it had to be great! I was so excited about having something other than Chinese food for dinner. Another plus was that the Sheraton had the only Irish pub in town, Danny’s, and since we have not found anything that resembles a bar in our hometown, this was a special treat. I'm not kidding - we have not seen one bar in our city of 3 million people!

Sean and I rode our bikes down to the train station early in the afternoon and did our normal song and dance for our train tickets for later that evening. We dressed up and hailed a cab to the train station to catch the 5pm train to Nanjing. Amongst the regular day to day travelers, we tried but failed to blend in. It was obvious, though, that some other couples had the same idea as us.

We arrived in Nanjing at about 5:45 and proceeded to look for the 317 bus. This bus takes us right to the Sheraton hotel. Unfortunately, the internet is not always correct and there was no bus 317. We hopped over to the closest hotel and had them write down “the Sheraton” for us in Chinese so that we could now hail a taxi. Again, you can’t imagine the difficulty of just trying to get around at times. We have also learned that the worst place to flag down a taxi is in front of the railway station because they are only supposed to pick you up at the taxi stand which is back inside the station and on the bottom floor. So there we went and waited in the very long line for a taxi but finally around 7 we were headed to dinner.

One of the exciting things about going to a bigger town is the chance to run into some foreigners that speak English. So it was no surprise that in the lobby of the Sheraton we came across some nice gentlemen from Europe. They had been living in Nanjing for awhile so they knew where our restaurant was and actually escorted us there!

We had a wonderful bottle of wine and two great dishes. I was even impressed with the bread, oil and vinegar. Again, it had been a long time since I had eaten something other than Chinese food so I savored every mouthful! I even ordered the Cappuccino Gelato and Cappuccino coffee for dessert…hey we were celebrating.

After dinner we headed back to the Sheraton and the Irish pub. We met the manager, Ben, who is a young man interning after graduating from a college up in Vancouver, Canada. It was fun to talk with him about his adventures of working in an Irish pub in China. They had a band… not so good, but still fun and different. It does amaze me what I will find fun now! We had to keep our eye on the clock because our train to go home was leaving at 12:45am. We would have stayed in Nanjing but the school still has our passports (they are getting our working visa) and you have to use your passport if you are a foreigner.

Headed to the train at about 1:00am...Click for more pics

We did make it back to the station and boarded our train only to find that they had overbooked it by double! We paid to have our own beds but that was not happening. Tired and a bit cranky with no ability to change the situation, I went from car to car to find two vacant seats and tried to doze off for the longer trip home. We pulled into the station about 30 minutes later than expected, hailed a cab to the school and were dropped off in front in the middle of the night.

Now normally, there is a security guard on duty to let us in the gate. It is now 2:30am and the officer was nowhere to be found. Sean and I assessed the situation and decided the climb over the iron gate on the side was easier than to attempt to hurl ourselves over the moving gate in the front driveway. I insisted that he go first. I laughed as he stretched and contorted his body over the metal spikes and made the leap to the ground. Now it is my turn. I handed my purse and coat over to him. I thought this could not be hard; I climbed trees as a child! Well I am now 41 and this was no tree. As I sat on the top of the gate with the metal poking every body part, I told Sean that I just could not do it!

This is the fortress we climbed over...Click for more pics

As I sat there in my dress pants and dress boots, I knew I could not just stay there - not to mention it was freezing. It took a few minutes but I did manage to get myself over without ripping my clothes or breaking a heel. It was not without a great deal of laughter on both our parts. We hobbled home and laughed about what a great Valentine’s Day.