Well the overnight train was a bit rougher than expected. The soft sleeper cars where like having a padded blue gym mat to sleep on. It was quiet though and I managed to get some decent sleep. My tailbone just might be bruised for a few days. We ended up getting a quad sleeper, so we had two others with us. Luckily they were pleasant and spoke Mandarin to each other. The one guy was my age and knew some English. He sold osprey and icebreaker outdoors gear which I had on. He called my hiking bag a "kite". I took the top bonk so KT could have the bottom. I put in my ear plugs and on my blackout soft shades and fell asleep before the lights were off. I was obviously tired.
The bathrooms were decent as they at least had a sink, soap, and towels. More than most we have been in thus far. Most bathrooms have been fairly clean but they do not provide soap or towels. Hand dryers are common, but soap is hard to come by.
We should be in Shanghai in about twenty minutes, but most of the train is still sleeping, so unsure when we actually arrive.
As we were preparing for arrival, the Chinese lady in our quad offered us both what looked like little cylinder pretzels (KT thought they looked like a medium sized nut). They were soft like bread with a nut in the middle. They tasted like what I would imagine cobwebs taste like. It was difficult to even get down. I made a face that clearly showed I did not enjoy. Kristen was much better and appeared to enjoy hers. Knowing her, I could not imagine how she enjoyed it, but hey, maybe she did. The lady ended up giving her a huge bag full as she looked as though she enjoyed them. She ate three more! The funny part is once we got off, I asked and she said they were awful! Lol. "Why in the world did you eat them and look like you enjoyed them?" She did not want to offend her. I obviously did not have a problem doing so. The trash can at the hotel ended up with a bag of some nasty cobweb tasting pretzel/nuts!
Shanghai (Shung-hi, as all locals call it) was close to my expectations. Huge buildings, convenient and well organized transportation systems, clean streets, and high end advertisements everywhere. However, the sky was still full of smog!
We checked into our hotel, Radisson Blu, which was located on People's Square right in the heart of it all. Nanjing road, a pedestrian road similar but smaller than Times Square, is where all of the tourism is that leads to the Bund. The Bund is a walkway along the Huangpo River over looking Pudong, the financial district of Shanghai. The smog really prevented the skyline from being beautiful. It was cool to see it compared to the colonial landscape at the Bund. However, it is definitely no NYC skyline. I did enjoy walking on the Bund as it was nice to be next to water. We walked to the old city of Shanghai to check out the traditional Shanghai housing and business district. Huge contrast. It felt like a cleaner Beijing street with every square foot used for business or living. The traditional markets sold everything from lace, buttons, gadgets, clothes, silk, all sorts of Chinese food, and on and on. It once again felt as if everything you would need to live was within two or three city blocks.
At the edge of the Old City, we walked past what looked like a rental wedding dress store. Very random. Especially since the lady was washing the dresses by hand on the sidewalk.
Walking around, I was pleased to see how well organized the city was laid out. It was super easy to walk around and explorer the new and old Shanghai. After miles of walking we made our way back to Peoples Square for an afternoon coffee. We settled on Starbucks as we welcomed some familiarity. Ironically, two coffees and a scone was the same price as two soups, a beer, and dumplings at lunch.
We made our way to the Shanghai Urban Planning Museum as I had read good reviews on Trip Advisor despite its boring name. I really enjoyed the museum as it outlined Shanghai's development plan to 2020 and it's goals. It was very well laid out, technology everywhere showing its plans, a 3D video on the city and a huge model of the city's landscape. The hard part for us was believing everything that they said they were going to do. There was much talk about being environmentally responsible,etc... But no real substance on how they were going to accomplish. It will be interesting to see if they become the top international city they aspire to be. They definitely have the abilities and money. Not sure if they really want to pay for it to be done appropriately.
We decided to shower and walk back down the Nanjing to check out the skyscape at night. We ate again at a traditional Chinese restaurant. Funny story here...it was packed when we walked in with very little English translation. The waitress brought is to a table with four chairs, where two people were already eating. Kristen slide right in and I joined her. The awkwardness felt like minutes as we had no idea what to do. We were being seated with what looked like a Chinese couple on a date. Luckily another waitress was cleaning another table by the window and waved us over. Phew, awkwardness averted! We learned that just one pepper on the spice chart next to the vegetable soup equals about three in the States. Crab dumplings are the best. And just because the menu says crab or vegetable, there is always some sort of meat in the dish. And it is almost always impossible to determine what kind of meat. We have just decided to skip meat in China. All of you meat lovers, I would bet you would make the same choice. Again, we had beer, two bowls of spicy vegetable soup and crap dumplings for $10! Loving how cheap it is in China, if you eat at non-western establishments.
Pudong is definitely more beautiful at night. Not sure if the light rain reduced the smog or the lights look better against the darker skies. We snapped some pictures before heading back to our hotel for some drinks at the 47th floor. The one cool thing worth noting here was seeing a business traveler from England facetiming his wife and daughter. He was showing them the view from above.
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