Today took an unexpected turn, when at 9:32 we arrived at Tianjin West Train station for a train we thought was departing at 9:45. Now this was pushing it a bit, but we didn’t think much of it, in our minds we were still ‘on time.’ It turned out that the 9:45 on our ticket was for Tianjin South! I had bought the ticket at Tianjin West and had taken the train from there a few weeks earlier so I expected the same. Only in the moment when a kind English speaker translated what the information desk had explained did I remember the last time I took this journey the train departed ‘early’ which we found quite odd.
So we were at the station all set for a trip to the Great Wall faced with the prospect of having to try to negotiate in a foreign language to get them to change all of our tickets to another day! This was not how I had intended on spending my Saturday morning. After a lot of queue hopping and Google translate we were able to get the same tickets for Monday, and with no additional fees!
A disappointing start, but a bit of relief as we were all exhausted after two very busy days. Instead we spent the day relaxing and packing. We put some of our favourite movies on (A Place Beyond the Pines and Bad Words) and got to work. We made a good start but still have a bit of work to do.
We did venture out in the evening, to Kitchen Igosso for dinner. It was delicious as usual and we followed this with a walk along Nanjing Lu, to the Tangla hotel. We stopped in there to visit China Blue, a cocktail lounge on the 49th floor with stunning views of the city.
What started as a bit of a disaster turned into a highly productive, peaceful and enjoyable day.
-Mrs T
Turners Abroad 