Saturday, March 26, 2016

Shanghai - Home


Today our bus to the airport is departing at 1PM so we have the morning to explore Shanghai on our own.  There are 4 different times with people leaving from our group today.  We are lucky enough to be on a direct flight to Toronto, quite a few people live in Toronto but none of them are on the direct flight with us, I think it is because we have to make a connector to Moncton that we are lucky enough to get on this flight.

Our hotel is located in a great location, only about 25 minutes to walk right into the financial district for Andre to get some close up pictures of the huge skyscrapers.  Of course we didn’t walk the direct route, we meandered through some local really run down areas, and so close to the new financial area, I’m sure if we came back in 2 years these old neighborhoods would all be gone.  On the way back to the hotel we walked along the river. 

We were glad there was not much traffic today, we've had some fun crossing the roads up to now.  The green man here I think means this "may" be a good time to cross, but check, double check, and check again for motorcycles, scooters, and cars turning as they really all think they have the right of way, the literally drive right through the crowds!


Ginger poodles were the most common dog we saw


Interesting presentation of the peeled pineapples


Local fruit stand


Doing laundry on the street.  This is about a 10 minute walk from the picture below, I'm sure none of these houses will be here in another 2 years


Shanghai business district up close










Mall in business district, $$$


TV Tower


Not so much traffic at 9AM on Saturday morning in the financial district


Disney is opening a new park here this year


Would be a great stop on a cruise ship, you are very close to town













Realized we were crossing the finish line for a marathon, we didn't get a medal!




We saw this sign often, a little lost in translation again


Nice bike seat!


Saturday AM must be laundry day


Back to the hotel by walking along the river.  Good to get out and get some exercise as well will be spending about 16 hours in planes coming up.


Off to the airport and go to the lounge with Martin and Tammy, thanks Martin if you are reading this!  Free food and liquor, so we take advantage of that.  Andre wanted to take more advantage of the liquor than I wanted him to, oh well.  Funny thing is we also ran into 4 of our tablemates in the lounge, so table 7 was well represented, we were only missing one couple. We did make a couple of trips to the bathroom here, quite the choices for cleaning, lots of laughs!  Definitely not the squat toilets we have been using the last couple of weeks. 

Good byes to our new friends, we are hoping they will make a trip east, or maybe we will some day be west again, they live in Vancouver.  Hopefully they will be in touch with us, we gave them our contact info,  but I didn’t get anyone's!
Very fancy toilet at the airport lounge

Very different from the squat toilets that we had to use in some places!

An uneventful trip home.  We flew Shanghai, Toronto, Moncton, all went well.  4 movies and that passes the time pretty quickly.  Used our Nexus cards, but it really doesn't save any time when you still have to wait for luggage.  We were the first ones at the baggage pickup, but nearly the last ones to get our bags. 

The long awaited Beef Burger


Impressions of this trip – we loved it.  We were pleasantly surprised how much we enjoyed this method of travel, especially I think with it being China and the huge language and reading barrier.  But I think a lot of it has to do with the group you are with.  Everyone was extremely considerate and on time, we never waited for late people.  It was fun having the mix of ages, we were worried it would be a super senior tour, but it definitely wasn’t.  We liked it so much we would consider doing another trip with them that focused more on the rural areas of China, we will see. 

Now we just have to get used to the 13 hour time difference, our internal clocks are taking a while to adjust back!

Note: Total lens cap drop for Andre 2,658 for this trip....

Friday, March 25, 2016

Shanghai - Shanghai Museum



Hard to believe this is our last full day of visiting in China.  Today at breakfast a business man sat beside us and we started talking to him.  He is from Palo Alto, CA and we talked about everything from the changes in Shanghai (he first came here in 1980), him meeting Pierre Trudeau, his Pilipino wife and how she was able to sponsor him to get into Canada, he is from Indonesia originally.  Anyway turns out he feels that he owes something to Canada and offered to take us to the bund tonight to see the lights, he said we should really experience the subway and will take a few of us if we can all walk.  We arrange to meet in the lobby at 8, but tell him we are not certain we can be there, and also if he has plans to not change them and wait for us, we’ll see what happens.


View from the business lounge at our hotel


We started off today with a shopping visit at the silk factory.  This was pretty interesting, we saw how the silk worm spins their cocoon and how they take the silk worms out, and then some eat them, passed on that.  This place made a killing on people buying silk comforters, we passed.  Many people on our tour bought them, everyone said they were a great deal, but no need for silk for us, so we left lots for others.  I did purchase a silk cushion cover for the living room, I want a new chair, so I guess I’ll try to match it with the new cushion!


Silk factory


Stretching silk to make a comforter


Prices of real estate in this area, The top one is a 2000 square feet condo and it is 3.5 million Canadian. Notice the blue packages people are carrying, these are the silk comforters that they shrink down for travel.


Next stop was the bund, the most famous view of Shanghai.  It really is spectacular, I know pictures will not do it justice.  We again were given quite a bit of free time to explore.  I think it is about 2KM long, you look across the very busy river traffic to a fantastic skyline of skyscrapers.  Hard to believe this has all been built in the last 25 years or so.  Shanghai is known as the financial centre of China, Beijing the historical and political centre of China. 


On the bund in Shanghai with Martin and Tammy






After lunch we are off to the Shanghai Museum.  We had quite a bit of time to spend here and a few of us decided to just explore the traditional costumes floor, then we were off to find some more shopping.  A couple of people wanted purses and watches so we were on a mission to go back to Nanjing Road and find a deal!  It really is fun going through this process, we went back to the shop we had been in yesterday, lots of haggling back and forth and I think 3 purses and 3 watches were bought in the end.  We didn’t add anything else to our purchases, we already have our Rolex and Gucci watches, and I have way too many purses at home now anyway, will save these knock off purchases  for New York at some time I guess.


Shanghai Museum


Traditional costumes at the museum





One of only a couple of Christian Churches we saw the entire 2 weeks


China hamburger?



Back wall of store opens to where you go illegal purse and watch knock off shopping, FUN!


Following the Shanghai museum we were committed to visiting a cashmere shop, I think the tour spent a total of 10 minutes here, but it was fun exploring the shop beside them that had silk embroidery and carpets.  What amazing work! Once again nothing purchased by us.


Silk embroidery





We are then taken to the Old Town Shanghai market.  Beautiful old Chinese architecture found here, something I really thought we would see more of on this trip.  We did purchase some more tea here, as well as 2 tea cups. 


Found a food court like we would have in the malls here, Andre had a good time wandering taking pictures



Beautiful architecture in Old Town Shanghai market


This is a live show that you look through and the man on the left commentates, no idea what is in there, but popular with kids and adults


Found out these are straws in the dumplings, filled with some kind of soup, we did not try them, but found out later some did and it was good





Tonight is our last supper with table 7, tomorrow we are all leaving at different times to goodbyes to our bus tour friends that we have met over the last 2 weeks.  Again it has gone by so quickly like all vacations do.



We saw these signs a few times, wondered if they just change it to 2017 in a few more months?


Back to the hotel at 8PM and I see our new friend Ray from breakfast in the lobby, we ask him if he can wait 10 minutes as we all have stuff to take up to our rooms.  Back to the lobby and we are off to the subway to go to the bund.  It really wasn’t hard to do, had to change lines once.  They have 500 km of subway now, another 500 to be added in the next 5 years.  We probably would have struggled buying the tickets from the machine, and walking through the gates was different than any of us are used to in metro, underground, subway or whatever you call it, so this caused some laughs.  There were 6 of us in total including Ray, and he was a great tour guide.  A much different pace than our daily tour, this man walked extremely fast!  One of the other guys is really into photography as well, so we had lots of stops to make as we walked around.  So many more people on the bund at night, it really is “the” place to go for the lights.  If we would have had one more night it would have been great to do a river cruise at night as well.  We walk from the bund to Peoples Square, with a quick stop at the Fairmont Peace Hotel, then catch the subway back to the hotel from here, we are totally done by now.  It has been a long fantastic day, and we are exhausted.

Wendy with our private guide Ray

We are in the minority


The locals on the metro


Bund at night, amazing lights!

even a full moon for us!




Nanjing Road at night

View from our bedroom, not in Grand Barachois