Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

The classic thing to do on a mountain in China is to watch the sun rise. Sadly, it was so cloudy that all we saw this morning was a gradual lightening of the gray.

After going back to sleep for a while and then having breakfast, I headed down the mountain. While my quads had taken a beating pushing me upwards yesterday, my calves bore the brunt of the downward climb. Exhausting. At least it's a different set of muscles.

My train wasn't until 7pm, so I had lunch at a tasty dumpling restaurant and poked around the Buddhist temple in the center of Tai'an. The highlights for me were their collection of miniature trees.

The train to Qingdao was pretty hassle-free. There was a bilingual scrolling display so that you knew you hadn't missed your stop and were suitably impressed when the train hit 200km/h. At one point it even smiled (^__^).