Touring shanghai (Sunday, working holiday)
At this time dad and I were still wary of much of the culture, where to go, what to eat and such. Fortunately, we met what's probably the only English speaking Jew in all shanghai, in Ying Ying restaurant, the locally popular morning eatery closest to our hostel. Chase, a Jew from florida, has been working as an English teacher in china since the beginning of the year and helped us order our food and gave us some tips about living/travelling in china. Now, several days later, we have emailed him in hopes that he could show us around Nanjing. Once he left, we filled our bellies for less than 5$ Canadian and didn't need to eat for the following 12 hours - Huge portions.
After much thought we sprang for the "big bus tour" of shanghai. I later regretted not knowing of the barbie themed tour of shanghai (photos to come). Shanghai is clean, with workers sweeping the streets at every corner, and bustling, crowds of people like I've never seen! All the comforts of home are here from KFC to esprit clothes to oil of olay skin care and much more, at better prices!
The city is continuously building offices, homes and towers, the modern look of which, I believe, cannot be paralleled by anywhere else in the world, except maybe Dubai, from what I hear.
Our first stop is at the Bund, a promenade along the huangpu river, packed with remnants of British colonization. A clock tower to mimic big Ben, banks, fancy hotels, within which Chanel and prada house their stores, and the original British consulate, now a museum. We in shanghai during a 3 day working holiday and we don't know if the throngs of people are due to the days-off or just because there are always people everywhere here!
We manage to find the only open bank in all of shanghai, thank god, and finally change some American money to remnimbi.
There are stautes and monuments everywhere in china and the bund has some of my favorites! We took lots of pictures of the soviet-Chinese stone panorama displaying the history of china and were also bombarded with Chinese people asking to take picutres with us! This has happened to everywhere we go and we aren't sure why... May be the way we look, cause other tourists don't have the same experiences, so they say. However, we try to interact with the locals as much as possible, always saying " ni hao" and smiling, so I'm hoping it's because we are friendly Canadian foreigners rather than a funny story for the locals to tell their friends later... But I can't be sure.
Another staute I liked very much was the big brass bull, who's partner, by the same artist, the charging bull, inhabits wall street in NY.
We hopped on the bus again to cross nanpu bridge to the eastern half of shanghai to visit the famous radio tower - The Pearl Of The Orient - and take a trip up the 88 floors of Jing Mao Tower, a definite must see due to the breathtaking views of the river and city. The elevator of the tower travels at 7m a second and u can't feel a thing, except the pressure against ur tympanic memebrane because of the speed of the climb/descent. The tower is built with dimensions relating to the number 8 because of its lucky connotations in confucious practices.
We quickly caught our hop-on/hop-off bus again and went back across the river to visit old shanghai and it's gardens. The old city is something out of a novel or movie! Again the streets were filled to the brim with people, but it couldn't take away from the awesome architecture and detailing everywhere ( see photos to come). We ran out of time and couldn't see the gardens, but I'm sure there will be some in Nanjing or Beijing to see.
We had the most frustrating time finding the river boat tour included in our big bus tour. We think they may have done this purposely to keep people from taking advantage of all the passes that were included with the bus tour. We spent hours looking for the boat, as did the other tourists. There are no signs and no English/ other language speaking people to help u and even the tour guides and bus drivers don't help u find the boat.
However, we found the boat in the end and it was a nice 45 minutes ride along the huangpu river just as the sun began to set and the lights of the shanghai skyline were beginning to glow.
For dinner we had idian food at one of the newer up and coming areas of the city, the cool docks. More upscale, and home to the new shanghai nightlife, it is more expensive but a great experience all the same!
We wandered back the the Bund to take in the full effect of the shanghai skyline at night before catching the metro to le tour to pass out.