Shanghai to Bengbu - The Wanda Realm

I did the best I could to try to prepare Emma and her mother for the trip ahead of them, and what they could generally expect.  I had only hoped it would unfurl at least with a semblance of how I guessed.  No matter the case, I'm sure they got an earful of a repeating mantra that I kept repeating over and over, "this is not like what it used to be".  I'm very glad Emma had the experience of the ultramodern Hongqiao railway station, and the high speed long distance trains..... but this was not like it used to be...
  I told her about the previous layout, the tedious and difficult method of transportation just 10 short years ago, of actually only a little over 5 years ago.
  We arrived via subway just in time for our high speed train to come and whisk us off to Bengbu.  We sped off at over 300 km/h, and I think we all tried to doze off for our brief 2 hour trip which took us through Suzhou, Wuxi, and Nanjing.  The train was eventually bound for Beijing, but we were sure to get off at our stop, with the train providing announcements in both Chinese and English. 
  When we finally stepped off, the weather was about 5C cooler than it had been in Shanghai, which hit us all with a shiver as we left our traincar.

Our view from the G108, car 10, to Bengbu!

Emma steps foot in the town of her birth!

I had briefed Emma on what to expect in Bengbu, and how different it was from Shanghai.  I had told her about the hotel I stayed in, in 2005, and how different it was from what we were used to.  I told her that she needed to brace herself.  We were staying in a new hotel, that had only been open year, and that hopefully it was better than the hotel I was in, in 2005:

My hotel room door in 2005

 My hotel in 2005.  I only knew it as "Number 3".  I had to go to "Number 4" to eat breakfast.

My hotel bathroom in 2005

Needless to say, I was only a little bit surprised to see this, when we arrived to the Wanda Realm:

 Let's see if I can sum it up:


- Lobby - HUGE.
- Wall mural - Gold plated
- lobby Chandelier - bigger than my house
- rooms - 5+ star
- bathroom: contained a bathtub and a separate "rain" shower, and a window with curtain to the rest of the room
- beds - better than mine at home
- wifi - very fast
- hotel breakfast - enough to feed a small army, with every cuisine represented - American, Korean, Japanese, and of course Chinese (and priced for it, about $15/person).


In short, absolutely incredible.  There's no more of me telling people that they can't come to Bengbu because of the accommodations.  It's now officially as grandiose and on par with the best of Shanghai or Beijing.