Ni hao from Shanghai! The time has flown in and we had our last day together as a group. After seeing all the lights and the bund last night, we decided to spend the morning walking round the French concession. We got breakfast pancakes from a street seller cooked fresh with egg & bacon. Street food is safe here. Anyway, thr french concession is totally different from the hustle n bustle and it's hard to imagine shanghai having this quiet parisien style living area in amongst all the high rise. Ended the walking tour at the wet market which sells everything; frogs, eels, snakes, all kinds of fish - all live. We were laughing cos half the stalls had people sleeping behind the counter - siesta time or maybe boredom! At the back of the market there were live chickens and pigeon totally crammed in little cages, worse than the battery farms in the uk.

In the afternoon we got the metro to the bund and walked along the river as gail wanted to look at all the old style financial exchange/trading buildings - most of them are designer shops & hotels now. We walked back to our hotel & chilled out for a few hours. It was the first time we were able to do that properly and our feet defo needed the rest. I'm sure my calf muscles have doubled in size due to all the walking, sadly so has my belly with all the food - who said it would be healthy here?!

We met the group for our final dinner and Marcia took us to a hot pot restaurant not far from the hotel. We each had a burner with boiling pot of water, vegetables & mushrooms and we made our own dipping sauces. There were plates of dumpling, raw meats, vegetables, fish balls etc. You put whatever you wanted in the pot & cooked it yourself. Once ready you fished it out with the chopsticks and dipped. Was nice novelty dinner. Afterwards we all got the metro to an acrobat show. We missed the first half hour cos we were rushing but the show was still fab and we watched for about an hour. When it was finished we got taxis to the pier and took a ferry cruise which was fab - views of shanghai from both sides; towers and the bund. It started to rain but we stayed on the open top deck for the views as it was amazing. We kept getting asked for photos and it got to the stage where we were getting fed up with it so we started saying no. Didn't stop them trying to get sneaky pics - we spotted them on the lower deck pointing their cameras up at us trying to get photos!

As it was the last night, a group of us decided to have a goodbye drink and it was recommended that we visit a bar/club in the French concession. It was £8 to get in with unlimited drinks. We couldn't believe it when we got inside, really modern bar packed out with people waving red light saber type things. Every other song there would be a performance by someone dressed up, singing & dancing. Two singers in ballgowns appeared on a raised stage from inside the bar area then a gok wan lookalikey rapped to the black eyed peas! It was totally mental but a fun experience. When they go clubbing in shanghai they really go for it lol.

We've arranged to meet everyone in the lobby tomorrow to say final goodbyes and we'll be continuing on our own again.