Shanghai Day 1

Wow! What a day! Let me start off by explaining our night....

We fell asleep around 7pm and woke up around 11pm. I took some Nyquil and was able to fall back asleep until about 2:30, but then Kevin and I were both awake until about 5:30am. The sun was already coming up and we were not happy campers. We finally fell back asleep only to wake up around 8 for breakfast (we had not eaten anything since we arrived and we were starving all night). We got back to the room around 9am and fell back asleep until about 4pm. Lets just say the jetlag got the best of us!

The view of residential skyscrapers from our hotel room. This is esentially what the whole city looks like.

While we were awake in the middle of the night, we talked about how intimidated we both were about exploring the city. The language barrier is pretty tough and were were very worried about getting out and about. We thought long and hard about whether we would stay in the hotel or explore, and we decided to explore! We did our research, packed our hotel card (with the address of the hotel in Chinese so if we get lost someone will hopefully be able to get us back), and started our journey.

We decided to go to an area called Nanjing Road. This is a famous tourist spot with lots of shopping and food. We found our way to the Metro (thank goodness all the Metro signs are in English and Conji - although things still were difficult to figure out) and went 3 stops to Nanjing Road. We were the ONLY white people from our hotel to the Metro - which was about 3/4 of a mile. It was interesting the say the least!

We finally made it to Nanjing Road (during rush hour) without any problems. :) It was a very cool site. This is right in the middle of the downtown area and the buildings were huge! The lights on Nanjing Road were lit up like Times Square. We started to see more white people and heard more English (definitely not much more though!) which was very comforting. We could tell this was definitely a more populated tourist area. We also ran into many Chinese people trying to sell "watches, bags, DVD." They easily spotted that we were tourists (because we are white) and tried to sell us anything and everything "tourist." We were able to walk away from them today, but I am interested to see what they are acutally selling. Maybe I will talk to them tomorrow.

Nanjing Road

We started walking toward an area called The Bund, and stumbled across a store full of Chinese gifts. Apparantly bargaining is very common here, and we got some great deals! Kevin and I each got a t-shirt, I got some awesome Chinese shoes, and a Coach Bag (probably a knock-off for what I paid, but I don't care - and no one else will know) all for less then $75 USD. I was pretty proud of myself for barganing so well! I can't wait to see what other gifts we find.

Shopping - Day 1

We finally made it the The Bund. This is an area right across the river from many of the new high tech buildings. It was another awesome site to see. We saw the 3 buildings that are commonly associated with Shanghai. Again we had to dodge people selling things, but we were starting the get the hang of it (avoid eye contact, and don't speak - that way they don't know if you speak English).

The builings across The Bund - 3 tallest buildings from L to R: The Oriental Pearl Tower, the Jin Mao Tower, and The Shanghai World Financial Center (which is currently the second tallest building in the world).

The two of us in front of Pudong. The Oriental Pearl Tower is on the left.

And another self-portrait

Say What?

After some sight seeing we went back to Nanjing Road and had a fantastic Chinese dinner. We had pork dumplings, chicken, and beef. It was delicious! As some of you may know, I am a picky eater, so the fact that I can travel the world and try new foods is pretty exciting for me!

I ate my whole dinner with chopsticks!

We finished dinner and headed back to the hotel around 9pm. We got back safely and are feeling much more at ease about exploring more of Shanghai in the next few days!

Nanjing Road at night. The lights are so beautiful!

Shanghai is hosting the 2010 World's Expo and this is the mascot. He can be seen all over the city. The motto for the Expo is "Better City, Better Life"