We had to wake a little early, about 7 to pack and get ready to go to the train station. We hailed a cab and had to suffer the 30 minute trip to the station with a carry on rollie suitcase across our laps because the trunk had some extra stuff in it. This was a terrible offense according to Laina who whined the whole time.
At the train station, we had plenty of time to get some breakfast (youtiao, sticky rice roll with some kind of fried meat inside, fresh hot soymilk and dumplings). Then we loaded the train (high speed train) and traveled about 3 hours to the city of Changsha. Once in Changsha we took the metro to our hotel and settled down for a bit. Soon it was time to go walk around and find some food. We took the metro back to a plaza called "Wu Yi plaza" (literally May 1st plaza--Labor Day). This was a huge shopping district that was absolutely filled with people. We didn't find any food that we were willing to either eat or stand in line for, so we walked to some smaller streets until we could find a small hole in the wall restaurant we liked the feeling of. Finally we found one--it held about 8 tables and each table could hold about 6 people. We ordered some dish with chicken and two vegetable dishes. We ate pretty much every bite...and paid about 8 dollars for it.
We took the metro back to our hotel and settled in for the night. We'd have to wake a bit early to meet our guide and driver for the orphanage visit the next day.
About Chansha
We didn't spend too much time in Chansha this trip because we had been there several times before, most importantly for Laina's adoption trip. We came to the adoption trip about 5 days before all the other families and had traveled around the city and the surrounding countryside before we picked Laina up. Then, on our last trip back to China with the girls, we also traveled through Changsha on our way to Beijing, and we weren't interested in staying in the town any more than we needed to. The tour agency that supplied us a guide and a driver to the Hengyang orphanage was based out of Changsha and they were going to drive from Hengyang to Changsha regardless of where we spent the night, so we decided that we would meet our guide there in Changsha and drive down to Hangyang with them. It gave us a chance to chat a bit with him and also to see the countryside a little better.
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