Weekend 2 in China

Friday night I went with some of my co-workers to a very nice area with no cars and lots of nice restaurants. We walked around for a while trying to decide what to eat. Sometimes in life, too many choices freezes the brain. Anyway, we went to a Vietnamese restaurant (first time for me). I ordered stir fry which was same as others I've had. We had some spring rolls which were very tasty, one with shrimp and the other with crab.While everyone else had a beer, I was interested in their fresh juices. I settled on a new one for me called "Dragon Fruit" juice. I guess this is a legitimate fruit that has an edible pulpy inside. The best thing I could say about the juice is that is was wet. Not thirst quenching, not sweet, just wet. It tasted kind of like drinking juice from the rind of a watermelon. Let's just say, I won't re-order that one. The rest of the group went off to a jazz club but it was 9:30 and I was fading and had an early start on Saturday, so good night to all.

Saturday, I went to two water towns outside of Shanghai. They are mostly commercialized with many gift stalls that I never entered. There were some authentic nice things to see from a long time ago, museums, gardens, Buddhist temples, etc. I was looking for interesting foods, street scenes and people to photograph and wasn't disappointed.





All of the photos can be found if you click on this photo but please note this will take you out of the blog where you can see a slide show of all of the photos on my website. You will have to use your backspace on your internet page to return to the blog:


Sunday began with a Skype phone call update with Susan. If you intend to travel outside the U.S. be sure to figure out the Skype thing before you go. You can even buy Skype call minutes to call from your computer to a mobile or home phone for like $.04/minute.

I left early to beat the heat and the crowds but I guess 7:30 AM is not early enough for either. I took the subway to an area called "The Bund", pronounced like fund. Took a nice stroll through a car free zone, a real treat around here, and then it began to rain. The Bund is a very fancy area along the river that divides Shanghai and attracts many tourists as it is the home to some very high end restaurants and hotels. I took cover under the awning of the closed Chanel store to wait out what looked like a brief shower. When I sat on the ground an security person came to shoo me away because that must be against the law to sit on the ground in front of a fancy store. When I stood up, he went away. Note: My son Jonathan would not do well here with all the restrictions.

The rain stopped so I proceed to walk around the Bund. I got some interesting photos of men practicing Tai Chi but otherwise, the Bund area, maybe a one mile concrete path along the waterfront, was crowded with locals taking photos of their loved ones with the building across the way in the background. I may have one of those on my photo page.



I then proceeded to walk through some neighborhoods on a 3-4 mile hike to my lunch destination which has been written up as the best hamburger place in Shanghai. It did not disappoint. The menu is all kinds of regular American food. I treated myself to a chocolate shake which almost made me forget about the burger because it was so good.

One other positive I noticed on today's walk was the presence of "traffic assistants" These people are there to make sure no one enters a crosswalk that is not showing a green walk sign and they actually go out in front of traffic to make sure no cars/bikes/mopeds make illegal turns and slow down the pedestrians. Very nice, now we only need about 50,000 more of these to make walking in this city enjoyable.

While I planned to see more, I decided to go back to my room and chill out for the early afternoon as I have already walked around 7 miles so far today. I decided not to go to the Expo since it is here for 2 more months and it might be cooler in September. did I say it was hot here? Well the humidity is now down so it's no as bad. I took a brief 3 hour nap before deciding where to go tonight.

Tonight, I went back to the Bund to see it in the evening on a relatively clear night. The place was absolutely jammed with people, tens of thousands in unending streams. I just tried to ignore the crowds and take my photos. I had some Japanese fast food for dinner, basically rice and beef with two tiny chicken legs and a salad thing for $4.50. I went to the Bund and took some photos and then got out of there.

See the photo links and here's a sample...

Pudong photographed from the Bund in the daytime, kind of blah...


Pudong photographed from the Bund at night, quite a bt more interesting...





By the way, I hate photographing buildings so don't expect a lot of these. Final walking total for the day was 12 miles.