Our plans to go directly to Shanghai from Song Shan didn’t quite materialise. We had to get a bus to Zhengzhou and from there a fast train to Shanghai, but when we tried to buy train tickets in Zhenghzhou we were told that everything for that day had been sold out. This meant we had to overnight in Zhengzhou and catch the 08:23 fast train to Shanghai the next morning.

We found a hotel opposite the train station, did a bit of walking around and then had a quiet dinner in our hotel restaurant.

Thursday morning we were at the train station at 08:00 and were pleasantly surprised with the train. We had reservations for soft seats and the ticket price was well worth it (an absolute fortune!) - the seats were very comfortable with loads of leg room, the people on the train was actually quiet and we even got a free bottle of water! We did the 1000km journey in 7 painless hours.