Shanghai - First Stop

I can see why they call this the Cosmopolitan City. Shanghai is vibrant and fast-moving, truly breathtaking. They compare this city with New York meets Las Vegas. They have a little old, mixed with a very high tech new, mixed with Euro 18th century and neon everywhere. It was just really cool to see all the architecture. There were some amazing buildings. The people all tried to dress nice and had high heels on.

Our first day out, we were walking on Nanjing Street (a very expensive street that they closed to cars. Motorcycles, bicycles and scooters went on the street anyway. Think of the game Frogger.) Anyway, we were starving and scared out of our minds. We realized we are in a country that has NO clue what we are saying. All of a sudden, we see KFC, then Pizza Hut, then finally McDonalds! We were SO relived that we were not going to starve to death also know as the “China Diet”. McDonalds has some different items, but they had a FANTASTIC Egg McMuffin! We basically ate there every morning, even though it smelled horrific.

Ryan and I spent most of our first day on Nanjing Street. We realized quickly that there are these “fleas” that come up to you. “You want watch, you want shoes? We got purses!”. They would track all the “Western” looking people (American/Europeans) and follow them, begging us to follow them is some sketchy dark ally to go into a hidden shop. We did go once. It was quite the experience.

On the second day we went to the Bund. It is a part of where the Huangpu River meets the Pacific Ocean. It is pretty cool there. Buildings of all types. I really liked it there. We met a guy there named Liu. He followed us up and down the banks….practicing his English on us. The weird part is he only knew how to speak English when talking about his religion (Jehovah Witness). He was super nice. I tried to get as much info out of him as I could about China, but all he wanted to do is talk about God. After about an hour, we had to say good bye to our new friend Liu.

We ended up going across the river to the Oriental Pearl Tower, it is 468 meters. We were able to go up to the 350 meter deck, but it was so cloudy we couldn’t see anything….total waste of money.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oriental_Pearl_Tower)

The next few days, we met our tour group and did this amazing walk around the city. Our tour guide, Charles, was super knowledgeable and took us to some places that we wouldn’t have gone by ourselves. It was really neat and eye opening at the same time.

I really enjoyed Shanghai. It was a little smelly, but probably my favorite city in China.

Pictures:

1. Ryan on our balcony of our Hotel
2. Nanjing Street
3. Liu and Ryan
4. A sign on the older part of Shanghai
5. Older part of Shanghai
6. Ally
7. Shanghai sky line from the Bund
8. Night view
9. Oriental Pearl up close
10. Acrobat show, there were 5 motorcycles in there!!