Jacqui and Richard Abroad: April 18 - 22: Shanghai

We got to Shanghai on Wednesday, the 18 of April. We went for a walk near our hotel and got to the Bund (the waterfront on the Puxi side of Shanghai). The skyline on the waterfront, on both sides (Puxi and Pudong) was quite impressive.

On Thursday, we went to the observation deck of the Shanghai Tower; third tallest building in the world and highest observation deck - 555m high as opposed to 549m for the Burj Khalifa in Dubai). We had a beer on the 119th floor (our highest beer ever unless flying on a plane) then went to a mall nearby. Later in the afternoon, we took the subway to get to the former French Consession district. Fuxing Park was beautiful; it still has trilingual signs, French, English and Chinese. After another short subway ride (their subway system is so efficient), we went for dinner at Tock's, a small restaurant owned by a former Montrealer. We had poutine and Montreal smoked meat for dinner, while looking at jerseys of Gary Carter and Guy Lafleur; it was great!!

We took a tour bus on Friday (hop-on, hop-off) as we figured it'd be a good way to see a good part of the city. It was very relaxing! We then went for a sunset cruise on the Huangpu River, which kind of splits downtown Shanghai in two major parts: Puxi is more residential while Pudong has a lot of tall buildings and is the business center of the city. The buildings at night were just amazing to see; it was a very nice skyline. We ended up afterwards with dinner in a restaurant near our hotel; food and service were great!

Saturday turned out to be shopping day. OMG!! Our plan, which we followed, was to go see Yu Gardens in the morning and then go shopping on Nanjing Rd East, which turns into a pedestrian road for a good part of it. The thing we didn't know is that to get to Yu Garden (no more than 1 km away from our hotel), we had to walk through a neighbourhood of shops. Shops everywhere! With people everywhere. I don't think I've ever seen a public place as crowded as this! It was pretty nuts. Once we got to the Garden though, it was beautiful. But to get out to go back to the subway, we had to again go through that enormous crowd. Things got a little better once we got to Nanjing Road! It is the world's longest shopping district, around 5.5 km, and attracts over one million visitors daily! We didn't walk the whole thing, thank God! We went back to the former French Concession district for dinner at the Boxing Cat Brewery. Good food, good beer, good times, and not a million people!

Sunday was our time to head back to Bangkok. We were both very impressed by Shanghai; it is a big modern city, that could be located anywhere in the world. Language was not an issue (as opposed to Xi'an). We will definitely go back if the occasion presents itself! Our China trip has been wonderful. So glad we did it!