Shanghai: Day Two
March 22, 2015
Our second day in China we woke up and tried the Western Style Breakfast Buffet in our hotel. There was a wide selection of food from pancakes and eggs to rice to congee. Victoria, my roommate, had a really interesting breakfast consisting of sushi, eggs, pancakes, and rice.
At 11:00 we left for the Bund. The Bund is along Suzhou Creek and the Huangpu River, you can see lots of barges traveling down the river and there is quite a bit of trash in the water. Across the river you can see Pudong in all of its glory. Lots of tall buildings including the Pearl TV tower, the Shanghai World Financial Center, and Jingmao Tower, the fourth tallest building in the world. The government pays a million RMB every night for all of the lights to be turned on in the Pudong skyscrapers creating a really remarkable lit view across the water. While here we also saw some concrete walls covered in different shades of flowers in a pattern that we took lots of pictures in front of.
While at the Bund I felt like a celebrity because lots of the Chinese people were taking pictures of us while we were doing our photo ops. They also approached me and wanted to take pictures with me because of my blonde hair and blue eyes – so weird!!!
After we left the Bund we went to Yuyuan or Yu Garden which used to be the home of the Pan Family. This exemplifies a classic Ming garden. It was really beautiful and there were large manmade ponds and limestone rock walls and intricate Mahogany carvings. We then shopped and had lunch in the large bazaar right outside and tried our hand at haggling. It was hard, but I think we did pretty well!
After shopping and lunch we met back up at a Tea House where we got to do a free tea tasting with April, our hostess. Afterwards, when we were buying some tea, a group of us got left behind and Kevin had to come get us!
Once back with the group we headed over to a silk factory museum. At the silk factory museum we learned about how silk is made from silk worms and then spun. We also saw how they made silk quilts and got to try our hand at adding a layer to the quilt, ourselves. They had a large store attached where you could find any silk item you could think of from shirts to ties to sleepwear to underwear to purses to scarves to ties (and the list goes on and on). I got a really cool silk robe with a dragon embroidered on the back!
Next we went to Nanjing Lu for dinner and more shopping. Nanjing Lu is very brightly lit and is reminiscent of New York City in the atmosphere. Here, our tour guide, Thomas, took us to see his friend who sells knock off designer items. We went into his shop and then through the back up a really sketchy steep, narrow staircase to another tiny room where he had all of the “real fake” items. They were pretty impressive in their similarity to the real deal and a lot of people bought Prada, Michael Kors, Louis Vuitton, and other knockoff purses, wallets, and watches.
After shopping we grabbed some buy-one-get-one free Tiger beers and a little pizza at an outdoor restaurant that was working really hard to try to rip us off. There were a lot of beggars coming through the restaurant hassling us.
After this last excursion we went back to the hotel with the intention of tacking a nap and going out at 11, but we ended up sleeping from 8 PM to 6:30 AM the next morning!
I will post pictures later!
Keep following along for daily updates!
xoxo J