Well, we took the easy route and bought tickets at the local travel agency (hint: don't go to AAA) since we wanted to have tickets in-hand before we left. Due to my bone-headedness, I sent our visa applications to the Chinese consulate in Chicago without realizing that they don't do mail-in applications anymore. One day I got a call from a woman who said to send an envelope with stamps so they could return our applications.

So we ended up using Travisa and sweating a bit because we only had a few days to complete the transaction. (High marks to Travisa, though. They also handled our Russian visas last year and the service is tops.) So while this was all going on I was in the mood to just be done with it, hence the travel-agent route.

We ended up taking a bus from Nanjing to Shanghai since the concierge at the Hilton told us the trains were packed due to the Labor Day holiday. Now this may or may not have been true, but we decided to go with the bus, partly because it came right to the hotel. Plus it was only 88 Yuan, or just about $10 apiece. It was a long ride - should have been about 3.5 hours but turned out to be 5 hours, 40 minutes. In the last row of a packed bus with Chinese-action VCDs playing the whole time. From ANA first class on a 777 to the last row of a Chinese bus - I think we had both ends of the travel spectrum!