Shanghai (day 3)

June 1^st

Today is our last day in Shanghai. In the morning, we headed to Suzhou. It is known as the “Venice of the Orient”. When we heard that it was kind of a no brainer to take the tour. The main street of the town is really cute. Lots of shops and restaurants everywhere. It was Children’s Day in China so the kids were getting out of school early and the parents were all lined up waiting to take their kids to do something to celebrate. There were parents and kids everywhere. It was a lot of fun to see. The English names of some of the restaurants made all of us laugh, The Drunken Clam & Mr. Stupid Ox. I hate that I didn’t get a pictures of them.

Our first stop in town was the Garden of the “Master of Nets”. It was really pretty but nothing like what we would think a garden would be. There was so much more. I enjoyed seeing all the living areas, artwork and architecture of the property. There were some great photo opportunities in the garden. 

After we left the Garden, we walked by some small shops and did a little a little shopping. It was my best haggling of the trip and I was so excited. She was so mad to sell me that watch for that price. Hope you enjoy the watch, Ben. I almost wanted to keep it just cause of the story behind it.

Time flew by and it was lunch time. We ate by the main canal of the city. It was a fun experience. Jed freaked everyone out by eating an entire fried shrimp and a fish head. It was so fun! 

After lunch we headed over the canal and hopped on a boat. 

The boats were really low and we had to keep our windows closed so we didn’t end up getting a lot of water in the boat. 

We road down the main canal area and were about to see parks, restaurants and homes of all the locals. They were not in the best shape and it was so humbling to listen to how they live there. They do not have running water in these homes. It is amazing all the things you need water for and all the hiccups you run into if you don’t have any. The older generations still love it here and have no desire to leave or change anything. The younger generations seem to be heading out of this area and moving into larger cities. It would be very sad to see this historical area disappear. I am so thankful to have been. I wish we should have had more time to explore some of the alleyways by foot and see more of what this area has to offer but they loaded us up on the bus and we headed back to the hotel hoping to avoid the worst of the evening traffic.

 Once we got back, Team Adventure headed to the subway and out to dinner in the French Concession area. We decided on a super spicy restaurant, Sichuan Citizen. On our way to the subway, we walked by a movie shoot, tv shoot or commercial shoot. It was cool to see.

The restaurant was so much fun! The food was so spicy and good and the crowd of people was so diverse. It was a very popular place. We tried a lot of great food.

After dinner we went walking around the area to find a shopping area near by. On the way, there was a small park where they had music and dancing. Gina & Dave are competitive dancers so we had the really cool opportunity to watch the two of them dance for a song. It was so fun!

As we were walking to the shopping area, it started to rain. We did make it down to the alley's of shopping but we didn't last long with the weather and a lot of the shops were closing.

We ended our night early enough to catch the last subway home. It was so funny running from train to train with a large group of other people trying to get to there final destination. It was so funny! We got back to the hotel pretty early but we weren't ready to head up to our rooms to back up and go to sleep yet. So we hit the karaoke bar in the hotel. Miranda was brave enough to get up on stage and sing "Don't Stop Believing" by Journey and "Living on a Prayer" by Bon Jovi. 

Steve and Anita came and joined us when they got back to the hotel and we closed down the bar. It was so fun to end our trip to China. 

Shanghai (day 2)

May 31^st

Today we get to explore Shanghai. Our first stop was back to the Bund. It looked so different in the day. It was pretty and still very impressive but you can’t beat the view at night.

We had quite a few local tourists that found our friend, Dave, fascinating. Vivian tells us that they call Americans, “big nose” and “hairy monsters”. Well, Dave didn’t shave on the trip so he became pretty hairy and local tourists would ask to take a picture with him. We just laughed and laughed. And took pictures ourselves.

On our way to the Shanghai Museum, we had a pit stop at the Silk Market. I was a little bummed that we had yet another one of “these” stops, but this one was really cool. We got to see how silk was made and it was fascinating! We got to hold a silk worm before it because silk and were able to see the steps from beginning to end. This might have been my favorite forced stop of them all (so far). We did spend entirely too much time there after the demonstration but lots of people were buying silk comforters, pillows, ties, etc.

We headed to the Shanghai Museum after everyone finished shopping. It was three floors of neat artifacts. Some of the carvings and paintings were just incredible. And we had fun checking out all the different kind of masks. We had about 2 hours to explore the museum and that was plenty of time to see everything. Tim, Jed and I grabbed a quick bit to eat at the museum restaurant (surprisingly good), and we were headed back to the bus.

Our next stop was the Yuyuan Gardens & Bazaar. This looked like nothing but trouble for me. It was more shopping. There were a lot of department stores, food shops, souvenir stands and tea houses. Anything you could possible want and there was alley after alley after alley. Jed, Tim and I took off souvenir shopping for friends and family. We later joined the rest of Team Adventure and just wondered the streets looking for “one of a kind” items. Boy, did we find some good stuff. I wish we would have had more time (and money) to stay longer but it was probably best we headed back to the hotel after a few hours.

Tea House

After we got back, it was time for Team Adventure time! Tonight we had about an hour to kill before Dave & Gina were ready so Tim, Jed and I took a quick walk to the local grocery store. I know this sounds silly, but I loved it. The grocery store is in the basement of a mall (seems like most are) and it isn’t huge. But we had fun picking out fun local snack foods for our flight home. Tim got seaweed flavor Pringles! That just sounds gross.

Tonight Team Adventure headed to a restaurant called Lynn. It was pretty fancy and nice. Shanghai is much more westernized then Xi’an and Beijing so there are quite a few people that speak both English and Chinese. It is a great thing but at the same time, we learned that many of the things we are saying when we order food, we are saying wrong. It was really funny. There was even a time that our waiter was speaking in English and we didn’t realize it and he had to write in English on a piece of paper to realize that he was saying. We laughed and laughed at that. No wonder people looked at us like we were crazy when we tried to speak Chinese.

We wanted to head to the financial district this evening and go to the top of the Pearl tonight. We realized at the end of dinner, the Pearl was closing earlier than we thought so we quickly ran to get a cab instead of taking the subway. We hopped in two cabs and off we went. Jed, Tim & I got to the Pearl and waited for Dave & Gina to show. We waited and waited and waited. We split up and walked around the Pearl doing our rally call whistle all the way. (Yes, we had a “team” whistle. It was awesome.) We waited so long the Pearl closed as we were standing there. I was a little bummed but there wasn’t much we could do.

The original plan was to go to the top of the Pearl for pictures and then go to the 3 tallest building in the World, Jin Mao Tower, and get drinks at the top so we figured we would walk down to the 3^rd tallest building in the world and we would just meet them at the top. When we got there it was closed. Strike Two. We were sad but we were not defeated yet.

The 2^nd tallest building in the world, Shanghai World Financial Center, was just across the street we took off to go to the top of that. We got there at 10:12pm. The last elevator to the top was at 10pm. Ugh. We were disappointed but we were determined to still have fun.

The evening wasn’t a total bust. We were able to take some really crazy pictures before we grabbed a cab back to the hotel. 

We refused to end our night on a sad note so we headed over to the bar in the hotel. That was one of the best moves of the evening. It is a karaoke bar and we had so much fun watching. Karaoke is so different here than in the states. The 3 go-go dancers we saw in the window last night, well they were there again tonight. They are the backup singers and dancers for people that do karaoke and if no one wants to do karaoke they have a set that they preform to entertain the crowd. We grabbed some drinks and just sat and watched as people sang fun American songs. It was a great way to end our night on a positive note.