Gone skiing

Shanghai to Beijing:
The train trip was a special as we could have hoped. We arrived in good time at a very huge train station. Traffic in these very huge cities can be very quixotic, so best not to cut this too fine. The taxi stops, and as we pay the driver, three young men arrive and take our four very large suitcases, and race away. Fingers crossed that this is supposed to happen and glad that our passports, tickets, and credit cards are fixed to us we attempt to follow, down some long stairs and up some very long stairs we arrive at a little gate, where we find them and the cases again, and realize we are paying for this very welcome service. Race up some more stairs, and we are placed in a large waiting room. This is the waiting room for the soft seat service to Beijing. Some stellar charade work and a point to a time on one of their cell phones, we work out that they will return at 6:20pm (in about twenty minutes) to get us on the train itself. They keep their word and racing us again down a long long long platform into our car. Frankly I don’t know how we would have managed without them. I know I say this every time, but next time not so much luggage!! All the racing on their part, was, of course, to get as many passengers on the train in their limited time available.
We had booked two soft seats on the overnight train. This is a bit of a gamble as the cabins come with two and four seat configurations. You could find yourself with two bunks in a four bunk set up, with two strangers in the other beds. We were in luck, and into the little two bunk cabin, with own loo, we went. This took a little doing, putting the luggage up in the top bunk, so we could sit. The linens were white and immaculate, and the towel came with the tooth brush in a little compact form. You had to soak it to use. We had a very good dinner in the dining car… chefs on board so the Chinese dinner was freshly prepared, and about 9 o’ clock we moved the cases around, and hit our bunks, We each had TV screens which were not working on our car (the staff was very mortified about this, but programming would have only been in Chinese anyway) started to read, fell asleep and with very few breaks, work up at 6 am! So this set up on the Bombardier made train, was very comfortable. This was a good thing as the preordered breakfast arrived a 6:15. The translation on the menu was a little vague, and we realized we had made a big mistake by ordering the “western fit breakfast”. We found this to be a rather dubiously cooked fried egg with un-toasted white bread. The coffee however, was very good indeed. I would travel by train again in China in a heart beat, the staff all gave big smiles, lots of trying with their English and the stations are in the middle of the cities.
We had been told by the hotel to stay in our train car and they would come for us and guide us through the station. Only, we arrived right on time at 7am instead of the 8am time we had told the hotel.
We decide we have to get off the train at the platform as the cleaners are lined up to get on. We ask if we can stay on the platform and no one seemed to have much problem with that. We stand in the deserted train station, pretending to be in a movie, -in was very dark--but in the wondrous time in which we live, the Canadian registered cell phone works, hotel concierge answers and problem is solved when the porter shows up in 30 minutes and the race through the station with the luggage begins again. This time we are in the mob scene with the workers arriving, plus the travelers coming in from country destinations. And the rush this time was the poor driver was double parked outside with all the buses. You just don’t get the same experience coming in from an airport. So to Beijing.
As ever Katie