Today’s itinerary was all about the visit to the senior’s home, travelling on a train to Shanghai (our last city of the Trip to China), and eating.  I won’t post the actual blog post that I originally wrote up on my cell phone on Day 12 here since it was so brief and written in point form that it actually makes more sense to for me to narrate we did according to the pictures I have from that day.  Enjoy! 

The day started off with a really nice buffet breakfast at the hotel:

Not only was there a pretty good selection of western breakfast choices like toast and cereal, they also had an omelette station where you could choose your own ingredients to put into the eggy roll and have it made right in front of you

It was sad leaving the awesome Grand Mercure Jinan Sunshine Hotel because it bypassed China’s strict policy on banning Facebook and WordPress.  It was just like being at home and surfing again.

The hotel even had a pillow menu for you to choose from! Also they have a really nice organizer of different plugs for your TVs, etc.

Arriving at the senior home in Shandong:

We were able to tour around their facilities which included a vegetable garden to grow crops in the back, exercise equipment, dining room, etc.  It was a pretty good senior’s home; definitely comparable to the ones in Canada.  Here, they actually have one attendant catering to every two seniors.  That’s exceptionally good!

We ended our visit with a performance of our well-rehearsed “The Moon Represents My Heart” song.  The seniors seemed to enjoy it.  We also handed out gifts to them and shook hands and spoke to each one briefly.  We were then treated to three individual performances from the seniors in return.

Back in the tour bus and I finally caught a picture of the interestingly shaped umbrella that I was talking about on Day 9!

Look for the purple

A picture that I took at the restaurant where we were having lunch that day:

A wall of food…  Just the way I like it!

I haven’t been posting a lot of pictures of the food we’ve been eating at our three-meals-a-day yet, so here is a sneak peek that includes a cool stand for the meat we had for lunch:

All of us rushing off to the Jinan Railway Station with our luggage.  I really like this shot. 🙂

Picture of our train ticket to Shanghai.  The ride was 4 hours long!

We had quite a bit of time to kill before it was time to board the train.  Some of us opted to check out the Chinese version of KFC that sold fried rice as part of its meals, some of us wandered around all of the shops that were on the ground level, and some of us spied on the rest of the group as we looked down on them from the upper level. 😉

Cool cell phone charging station!

Spying on our group from above:

The very large train station.  Lots of space considering that it’s in China where personal space is usually so hard to find.

Philip and Eddie were the look-outs and guarded our luggage:

Zoom lens!

Fans of China 😉

Boarding the train.  Most of us spent it sleeping.  I won’t post the sleeping pictures that I took of certain individuals. 😛

Arrived at the Shanghai Hong Qiao Railway Station!

What do we do when we’re in Shanghai?  Go clubbing of course! 😉  Pre-drink picture in the hotel room:

Blurriness in the club

The end of Day 12!  Three days left of the trip!

Click to view my posts for Day 1&2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, and 15!