I’m slowly getting my jet lag under control, and spent the evening uploading the best of my Shanghai pix to Flickr. You can see them in all their glory right here.
My next steps are to link-ify my previous entries from China, and fill you in on the rest of my trip!
I thought I had posted last week via SMS, but apparently it never got through…
At any rate, I’m still alive but gave up on updates after the Internet connection went down in the business center of our hotel. My only other immediate option was a Starbucks in the mall across the street, and while I would have loved nothing more than to upload photos and stories with my laptop and a free wireless connection while sucking back copious amounts of the black stuff, that same Starbucks is so cram-packed day and night that such an option was not available.
So y’all will have to wait until I’m back in Toronto, some 24 hours from now…
After yesterday’s post the birthday girl and I headed out to explore the west end of Nanjing Road. Our first stop was at the mighty J.W. Marriott, where we inquired about their breakfast service. At almost $40 CAD it might be worth an indulgence over the weekend, but didn’t seem worth it for the short time before it closed down. So we soldiered on through the late morning heat to the fancy upscale malls on that side of town. I got her a surprisingly affordable birthday present from a local designer, and when I say “affordable” I mean marked down 300 Yuan to 90—just about twelve bucks Canadian!
The lack of sleep from the night before started hitting me just after lunch, so we cabbed back to the hotel and slept most of the afternoon away. In the evening we took another cab to Xujiahui for some more shopping and ran into Dennis, a fellow Torontonian in town to buy some Chinese books for his wife. Once the mall closed we were faced with a problem—we hadn’t yet had dinner and the only options around seemed to be fast food, not the best choice for a birthday dinner!
Fortunately one of our Shanghai guide books had a listing for a spot that was open all night, called Bao Luo. The food was great; I just wish they had taken the heads off of the prawns before frying ‘em up and putting them in that delicious curry sauce….
Hi Andrew,
Glad to hear that you and the girl had a good trip – and happy to hear that the Mad About Shanghai blog was useful.
I have to agree with you that the museum in Pearl Tower is the highlight of the visit – we almost missed it (lame) was running though my brain before Sabrina (thankfully) dragged me through the door!
Shortly after I published yesterday’s post LinLyn and I took the Nanjing Road mini-train as far towards The Bund as it would go. About six congested city streets later we were treated to the awesome spectacle of the Pudong skyline across the Hangpu River—which you’ll have to Google or Flickr, for now…
To cross the river we went underground and took the hilariously-tacky Bund Tourist Tunnel. For 40 RMB ($5 CAD) you climb into a tall glass pod and get whisked through a tunnel filled with silly lasers and inflated manga characters—priceless!
I figured we couldn’t go back across the river without at least checking out the view from the Oriental Pearl Tower, and we ended up staying for an expensive and very mediocre buffet in the tower’s revolving restaurant. On a whim we checked out the free Museum of Shanghai History in the lobby afterwards, which was by far the highlight of the entire building!
A very humid stroll back up Nanjing Road had us stopping at Haagen-Dazs for ice cream at about 11:30pm. I foolishly ordered a coffee as well, and didn’t really sleep last night as a result. Today is going to be interesting…
Greetings from Vancouver. Yes, Vancouver.
How can you have an hour stop-over in Vancouver on a non-stop flight between Toronto and Shanghai? Ask Air Canada, not me!
I’d be a lot more upset, but the espresso and cookies in the lounge here are quite tasty—way better than the Harvey’s slop I had to pay for on the flight here…
Lord Wat is discussing.
Lord Wat 1:59 PM on September 1, 2006 Permalink |
Awesome pics. I’m officially jealous.