A Trip to Shanghai

Char and I were up early so we could be out by 7:30 a.m. to catch a cab to the train station. It is not as easy as it sounds. The cab drivers don't like to pick up foreigners because we usually can't communicate with them - which we couldn't. Fortunately, and very nice older gentleman stopped to help us. He hailed a cab and told the driver to take us to the South Railroad Station where we arrived at in plenty of time to catch the high-speed train to Shanghai.

 It is a great way to travel. By 3:00 p.m. we were checked into a beautiful room at the Marriott Courtyard Hotel on the Pudong side of the city. 

It was a shabby view out our hotel window, but somebody had to take the room. We decided we would suffer so no one else would have to. 

We hadn't had much to eat all day so the first thing we looked for was a place to get some food.  We found a restaurant in the mall close to our hotel and then began ordering.  We ordered a beef steak dish, sweet and sour spareribs, rice, spinach, egg rolls, and pot stickers. Our table was covered with food. They also brought us some kind of sweet rolls that we did not order. We tried to explain that we didn't want them, but they just smiled and brought us some boxes to take them home. Not able to communicate, we paid for the rolls and made our way out of the restaurant - actually rolled out. (Pun intended.)

For the evening activity, we decided to visit the Bund which is a beautiful walk along the river across from Pudong.  My camera doesn't take the best pictures in the dark, but everything around us was lit up and beautiful. We strolled along with many other people, and enjoyed the scenery around us.

These two pictures are of the Bund.

This is looking across to the Pudong side - where our hotel was.

Sights down one of the main streets of Shanghai.  You can see it was a busy night.

A few of the neighborhood women dancing and enjoying the evening. 

We made our way home about eleven o'clock and dropped into bed for a good night's sleep.

We awakened the next morning to an overcast and rainy day.  When we only had  three days to see a Shanghai, we weren't going to let a little rain stop us.  Armed with our trusty umbrellas we set out upon the day's adventure. First we explored the places close to our hotel in the Pudong area.

This is the Pearl Tower building - one of Shanghai' most famous landmarks. 

These arrangements were all created with living plants.

A daylight view of Pudong.

I don't think you can tell, but this building is decorated for Christmas.  It even said Merry Christmas on it.

Next we took a cable car through a tunnel to the other side of the river.  It didn't take very long and would have been cheaper to take the subway. But it was the touristy thing to do, and there was a light show all the way across.

Once we made it across the river, we hurried back to see the Bund again in the daylight. I am sure it wasn't as beautiful as it would have been on a sunshiny day, but it was still fun walking down the streets again. It almost felt like we were in a European city.

I may have told you this before in another post, but the Chinese love to pose for pictures. You very seldom see them just standing straight and reserved when someone is snapping their picture.  At first it seemed a little strange.  The more I watched them pose, the more I thought it was a great idea. A good pose adds a little life to a picture.  I find myself doing it more and more.  I will probably go back to the boring American stance when I return home, but for now I am enjoying following the Chinese way. 

Visit with Char

Monday, November 12, I went to the airport to pick up my dear friend Char. She came at just the right time to give my life and psyche a boost. It is a good thing I had just been offered a job by the time she arrived, or I probably would have gotten a ticket to return home with her.  As it was, we could just enjoy each others company and talk and talk and talk. So now you know what we did on Tuesday. Oh - I also got to look through all my winter clothes that she brought me from my house.  It was a little like Christmas, and it was very nice to have warm clothes to wear.

On Tuesday morning we decided to visit the Old Summer Palace.  It had been destroyed by the French and the British in the early 1900's.  They have never rebuilt it like they have the New Summer Palace. Instead they just turned it into a park. I am sure it is much more beautiful when all the trees are green and there are flowers in bloom, but it did give us the chance to walk and talk some more. You can see that it was a beautiful, clear day without many people - a very unusual thing for the busy, bustling city of Beijing.  We couldn't have found a better place to spend the morning. Just pretend you are meandering along with us.

We spent the afternoon in the Art District 798. It was originally an old German factory.  It is now made up of many tiny shops for artists of all kind. These are just a few of the pictures taken as we walked through the streets.

We did end up eating dinner there.  It was an authentic Chinese dinner made up of pumpkin cream soup, margarita pizza and chicken curry.  You are right - it was not an authentic Chinese dinner, but it tasted very good just the same. It was a very nice way to end the day and make our way home.

A Visit to Tianjin

In September a couple of friends and I went to visit the city of Tianjin for the day.  It is about 60 miles southeast of Beijing, and took us around 40 minutes on the high-speed train.  It didn't feel like we were going fast, but I quickly found out that you can't take good pictures out the window of a train that is moving at 190 mph.  Tianjin isn't a city that has a lot of foreign tourists, but we had a great day seeing the sights there.  LaDeana  and I have been on a few outings before, but this time we were joined by Erin and her cute little boy, Jake - who stole the show with his blond hair and blue eyes.

Our first stop took us to the porcelain house.  Every part of it was made of mosaic tiles out of pieces of porcelain.

Even the inside had murals and staircases made of the mosaics.

As I said before Jake was the hit is of show, but he wanted none of it.  Erin helped out by holding him, while people stood close by.  (I think she could have paid for her trip if she had just charged a little for each picture.


We left the porcelain house and began taking in the scenes around the rest of the city.  We hired a driver to take us to the different parts of the town, and he did a great job.  Tianjin has about 13 million people, but the pace is much more relaxed than Beijing.  Beijing is like New York, and Tianjin is more like Seattle. It was actually very peaceful and relaxing.  It's building in the main part of the city have a very European look.  There are even parts of the town called the French and Italian sections.

Very tasty chocolate!

They also have the very oriental plaza for the tourists where you can purchase Chinese trinkets. I was able to buy a beautiful Chinese jacket which I hope to wear when the weather gets warm again.

The buildings look old, but they are really quite new and just built to look old.

I'm not sure what this fountain represents, but it was a very popular tourist stop.  It was in front of the entrance of a little walking street with all kinds of restaurants from everywhere.  I even saw a few German ones, but unfortunately, we had just eaten pizza at Pizza Hut.  Small World!

Our driver fell in love with Jake, and even won him over by the end of the day.  The driver called his family and friends to meet us at the last stop so they could see him with Jake and take pictures. It was really quite fun to see how pleased the driver was.  And Jake was cool about it too.

We made our way back to the train station to start our journey back to Beijing.  Jake was done, and we were glad to be headed home.  It was a very fun outing.