Originally Posted by
mosburger
Nanjing main to Suzhou main today in 1h10min with quite a few intermediate stops. Was rather tired after a long morning meeting and lunch and just sipped on a beer and watched the scenery en route.
Nanjing main station, though modern in appearance, seriously lacks Nanjing south in service offerings. Please do buy especially food in advance, nothing really available at the station itself.
But again, I love this city, it's stunningly beautiful at times, the food is brilliant, the people complicated but interesting and the surrounding mountains offer some of the best spa experiences in China.
While I'm going off topic here, I'm curious to hear more about both of the points I bolded. When I lived in Nanjing (17 years ago), it was a complete disaster of a city (construction dust everywhere, which made Beijing/Shanghai development appear environmentally friendly by comparison).
Regarding spas, I'm such a fan that I try my best to go to really cool (and expensive) spots in Japan at least once a year. As such, I've set the bar pretty high. I also spa in China whenever opportunities present themselves, but I had no idea (until reading your post) that Nanjing was even on the radar in this area. I have been to a few 温泉 in Guangdong that were extremely impressive on the surface, in spite of the fact that they fell short of what I'm used to in Japan in terms of the total experience (i.e. the Japanese places tend to have far better food, and never --as far as I know-- add products like milk or beer to their hot springs). In any event, if you have any good recs for Nanjing that won't take me 5+ hours to reach from Shanghai, I'm all ears.