One Blonde in a Sea of Brunettes

Wednesday and Thursday September 8 and 9
Our room in Shanghai is SO NICE! It has the best view of the Yuyuan garden and of most of the city. Not only that but it is the only hotel so far that had beds that didn’t feel like you were sleeping on the kitchen table. We had some free time so we figured a good trip to the Yuyuan garden would be fun just because they have a lot of really great places to shop. My roommate and I found some pearl rings we both really liked and we were able to get the price down from 460 to 45kuai! That is a 97% discount! Basically we are becoming expert hagglers. Later that night we went out to dinner and they served us chicken feet! I didn’t try it, but a few of the others in our group did.. they said it tasted a little like gelatin. Gross? Afterward we went to Xintiangdi street that was built back when The Bund was built as living quarters. Now they have changed it into nice restaurants (none of which are Chinese restaurants.) When we got back to the hotel we decided we definitely needed to go to see the Pudong from across the river. It was such an incredible view! The buildings go on forever and the screens on the buildings were over twenty stories high. The Oriental Pearl is definitely what stands out the most though. I have to say, so far Shanghai is definitely my favorite city. It is full of life and excitement. I could absolutely see myself working here one day.  
    The next day we went downstairs to check out the breakfast buffet and it was so delicious! Its funny though that the Chinese don’t really have many differences between all their meals like the U.S. does. Though this hotel did have a few American options (like cereal) I mostly just ate the Chinese food they had. On the way to the Shanghai Museum I realized what crazy highway structures shanghai has! You might see the place you are going on your left side but then you can’t exit you just have to turn around and go in circles and all sorts of crazy stuff. The museum was great though! The inside was beautiful and entirely made of marble. Des and I decided to start on the fourth floor and work our way down. We saw exhibits like  the Chinese minorities that had a lot of really interesting wardrobe things for celebrations as well as jewelry and fun (and scary) masks. Then we went to see the currency collection which was mostly coins but some of them dated all they way back to the Qin dynasty! (Mom I know you would have just died when you saw them.) We were also able to see a lot of really incredible Chinese ink paintings. (did I mention that we’ll be taking a calligraphy class? I’m really excited for it!) We saw the jade exhibit, and that was really incredible, I can’t imagine how ancient people were able to carve these pieces so delicately. Then we went to the furniture gallery, that was so so cool! Unfortunately though my camera wasn’t working too well in that lighting so I only got a few good pictures, but that furniture was still seriously impressive. Lastly we saw the bronze exhibit which I definitely think is my favorite. I know that China was the most advanced during the bronze era, but damn! Those were so remarkable! I couldn’t believe how intricate some of the pieces were.
    Anyways I think what I love so much about Shanghai is this new movement that’s going on called “better city, better life” where they are building a lot more parks everywhere as well as just hanging gardens from the highways. It is really turning out to be quite beautiful. They have also cleared up a significant amount of pollution, mostly for the Expo though I’m sure.
    After we grabbed some lunch we were off to see Pudong! The Oriental Pearl tower was a really cool site to see. Supposedly it’s red, but it is definitely pink. When we got to the top we could see all of Shanghai! It was unbelievable! You could even see the World Expo in the distance! Then we went down to another observation deck that had glass floors… I chickened out though because it was seriously frightening. Also though, Des told me that she accidentally kicked up one of the glass plates, what the hell is holding all of that together?? When we came down we just decided to hang out next to the river, the Pudong side of course, to just chat and discuss about how much we all adore Shanghai. After we got a little bored we headed to the mall nearby. We found the grocery store, which was huge and had all sorts of neat stuff, so that we could buy some canned chardonnay. It basically just tasted like a spritzer, but at least it wasn’t baijiu!  Des and I decided to head over to the IFC mall, which is the one with all the designer stores, we were looking a mess at that point in the day but basically we didn’t really care. It was fun looking at Cartier, Gucci and Louis Vittion.
    That night we all decided we should experience some Shanghai nightlife, it was so fun! The clubs were outstanding, they were all trying to out do each other in how modern each one looks. The first place we went to was Zappatas because they had free drinks for an hour, then we went to this place called SoHo that was so wild! I wish I could describe the bathroom, it looked like a spaceship! Thankfully we didn’t have to deal with any drunk drivers tonight though. I never want to see that again.