OK so we have arrived.

We got a taxi from the hostel. I had to get in the front becase we had too many bags, the seat belt didnt work. i thought it was scarey sitting in the back! it was like the worst ride of my life. theres meant to be 3 lanes of traffic but people make there own lanes the only 2 things the drivers over here know how to use are the accelerator and the horn!

we made it too the train station in one piece, now we had to find the train platform, all signs were in Chinese so it was abit of a nightmare! we were the only white faces there.

we got to our cabin and we had the top bunks, we knew we were going to have to share the room with some loud chinese men who would snore and smoke all night. it got to 5 minutes before departure and i was praying to god that we wouldnt have to share, because we have noticed all chinese women talk 100mph and all the men stare at kris, smoke non stop and hock up flem every few feet! (actually the girls do this too, not nice when you eatin\g in resturant). but then the train left the station so we had pour own cabin with 4 beds! we were well lucky, because i went to the toilet during the night and a few doors were open and they were all packed!

had a quite good sleep on the top bunk, woke up a few times on the way, thinking where am i!?? went to the toilet in the morning and had my first squat toilet experience since thailand, squating whilst on a moving train is quite a challenge but i managed it!

got to Shanghai. Its really busy and polluted, and you have massive posh sky scapers next door to shacks without doors. We hailed a taxi and got in while it was still moving so a good start, the driver didnt want to put the meter on and he tried to say it was going to cost us 50yuan but in the guide boks it said its more like 10! so i  said no way and got the bags out the car and went to another taxi, we got to the road where our hostel was supposed to be( the map we had wasnt very clear) we asked a few people, well actually pointed it out in the guide book (i wish i could speak some chinese it would make things so much easier!) and everyone told us different ways so we were walking up and down the same road for about an hour and kris luckily saw the hostel sign in the distance just rpound the corner to where we were dropped off to start with.

We checked in all ok and went to our room, it was really posh with a massive shower, bed and it had a tv (but no english channels, i did watch england play though with chinese commentry so was quite strange) 

we went to the shopping streets which had all gucci ans prada shops, adn then we went to the bund which is by the side of  the river and on the other side you can see all these sky scapers one of them is the 4th tallest building in the world.

today we went through the tourist tunnel to the other side of the river, the tunnel has got really futuristic trains which holds about 4 people and psychedelic lights all the way along its really unusual. We had a really nice lunch in a hip coffee shop, where i got talking to a swedish guy who now lives in Shanghai as a consultant and he talks almost fluent chinese we were well impressed when he ordered his lunch.

we wanted to get a train from shanghai to xian but because of chinese new year we were told we would have to wait 10 days in shanghai which would be too long as theres not that much to see here. So we decided we would get a train to a place called Nanjing which is about 2 hours away, and we can fly from there to xian for about 60 quid and it takes 2 hours instead of 17 on a train, also it looks like this is the only way we will be able to get to xian this time of year. We wnt down the train station to try and get the tickets to Nanjing, but there was no chance. There were no english signs and the queues were hugh! everyone trying to get home for new year. so we had to get the hostel to get them for us.

as you can see we didnt do that much here but we saw all the major sights.