Vacation in Shanghai

After our whirlwind tour of Beijing with Jim and Cindy, we embarked on three days of tourism in Shanghai. We spent Thursday at the flower market and Pearl Market doing some shopping.

We followed that up with picking up our friend Lauren from the airport and dragging her out to a fancy dinner at Kathleen's 5 restaurant on top of the Shanghai Art Museum. It was Jim and Cindy's wedding anniversary so we had to go out and celebrate. There was a great view of the city from the rooftop atrium. As we were eating building after building lit up with neon and LEDs. Some of us were not sure exactly what we were eating, namely Jim, but our best guess was some kind of internal organ like an intestine. It was an interesting evening.

The view from the atrium on stop of the Shanghai Art Museum.

Friday was the official first day of the holiday here in China and we made the dumb mistake of trying to go to Yu Gardens. I think every Chinese person in Shanghai was there. We left after 10 minutes of insanity. We went and did more shopping, got our hair washed and then had a huge Chinese dinner with our friend Lou Yun. We were in a private room with a huge lazy Susan full of too much food. Again Jim ate something odd, a chicken foot.

Lauren and Cindy experiencing the hair wash, complete with an ear cleaning for Cindy!

Saturday was a trip to the fake market on NanJing Lu to get some final gifts for people back home. We also took our guests to the grocery store to see the insanity that it is. After some spaghetti at home and relaxing we headed to the airport for our midnight flight and the beginning of the real vacation...Cebu, Philippines!

Lauren and I bought matching Uggs at the fake market.

Gubei Carrefour

Carrefour is a French based retailer of groceries and such. They are the grocer of choice for foreigners in China. There are two such grocery stores near our apartment, but the one in the area called Gubei is supposed to be the best and have the best selection of imported goods. The problem is, its not easy to get to from where we live.

Today I ventured there to see what all the hype was about. Basically its just like the one near our home, but much bigger. AND all the signs are in English as well as Chinese. They must know that they have a huge foreign customer base. Its incredible to see such a huge store, 5 floors. The first floor is entirely a food court. The second and third are groceries and household goods (think Super Target or Walmart). The fourth and firth floors are part parking garage and part micelleneous businesses like Gymboree.

really?

I saw something today that beats out every other stupid thing I have seen for sale in China: buns on a keychain with faces. What the heck? Am I missing out on some cool trend by thinking this is the lamest keychain I have ever seen in my life? They were for sale outside the metro station near Super Brand Mall (which is quite possibly the lamest name for a mall ever). Anyway, I took a picture because I don't think I could possibly due the lameness justice. I don't know if these are real buns or just plastic replicas, but I have a feeling they might just be real.

Honqiao Bird & Flower Market

I took a trip to the Bird & Flower Market this week. It was amazing to see all the bonsai trees and other relatively exotic plants and flowers for sale. There were tons of orchids that were so beautifully perfect, I thought they might be fake (they weren't). There were some pretty unique other non-plant items for sale as well like stone dragons and soldiers and hand carved wood trinkets. A few landscape companies had shop set up in the market with outdoor examples of their designs. Definately beautiful.

As far as the bird part of the Bird & Flower market wasn't all that impressive. I only saw a few birds, but there were thousands of fish - different types of goldfish mostly. There were also baby bunnies and mice for sale. It was like a pet store market place for small animals (no dogs or cats).

A Long Weekend

So for our first weekend in Shanghai, we decided to have our chinese speaking guides (people from Scott's company) show us some of the tourist sites and some of the places that were on our list of things to see in case we move here.

On Saturday we went to Nanjing Lu, which is the equivalent of the Magnificent Mile in Chicago - only 100 times more crowded and insane. While we were there we stopped for lunch at some kind of, almost, italian restaurant that was inside a department store. Also in that department store was a cream puff stand. I ate the best cream puff I have ever had and it was bigger than my fist! We also went to the bund (riverfront) and then finally, IKEA. IKEA Shanghai is exactly like IKEA in Schaumburg, but with a billion more people. Check out the picture of the couch section - every couch had people sitting on it. We also went to the most ginormous grocery store I have ever seen.

Today we took the subway to Yu's Garden. This was the first place that we've actually seen old Chinese architecture. It was pretty amazing. Surrounding Yu's Garden are a million little shops full of all kinds of tourist goodies. This afternoon I decided to hike to the grocery store by myself and navigate through it. If you ignore the scary things (meat goobers with bone, jellyfish, chicken feet, etc), its actually a fabulous place.

All in all it was a bit of an exhausting weekend. I am starting to think we might be able to survive here...and maybe even like it.