Ahhh... It was great to wake up on a Monday and not have to go to the office. Jetlag had our body clocks quite messed up, so we didn't sleep very much. I got up at 7am and went for a run in the French Concession West, which was like running in a sauna. We took things slowly this morning, getting packed and ready to check out. Another great breakfast buffet in the hotel restaurant, and we were checked out by 10:15am and off in a taxi to the Jade Buddha Temple.
Wow, the incense was thick! So with 34C, a cloud of stinky smoke, more Buddha statues than we could count -- some very scary looking, I might add -- and we were ready to leave after a short visit.
The next planned stop was Yuyuan Garden and Bazaar. I love the new Shanghai Metro, so I had the bright idea to walk the "few blocks" to the Station. Big mistake. It took forever and we were drenched with the humidity and heat by the time we arrived. Then it was three connecting trains. My Metro idea chewed up an hour and was admittedly a bad plan.
We eventually found the Yuyuan Bazaar and Gardens. The pictures describe it best:
By the time we walked and shopped, I was zapped by the heat, so we retreated to an air conditioned Starbucks for iced coffees. Starbucks, and every fast good chain imaginable, permeates Shanghai. Chairman Mao would roll over in his communist grave if he knew.
Feeling refreshed, we set out -- by taxi this time ("happy wife, happy life") -- for the Shanghai Museum in Peoples Square. Rebuilt in the 1990s, it is an architectural masterpiece filled with four floors of Chinese porcelain, bronze, furniture, coins, etc.
The place was packed - after all, it is one of the city's top attractions. We did a "Dave-and-Pam-see-an-eight-hour-museum-in-two" mad dash. And by the time we finished the fourth floor, we collapsed on a bench and fell asleep. I'm sure a number of Chinese passers-by snapped a pic of the two crazy sleeping Canucks to show their friends! What a sight. By the end of the visit, we started getting a little bit silly. I guess we were feeling fried. Or boiled?!
By 4:30pm, we exited the museum and headed to Old Town, where we miraculously found the city's best preserved example of Shanghai's alleyways. The Bubbling Well Apartments development from the 1920s is a large area of brick tenements, featuring alleyways where you get an excellent glimpse into the life of the city-dwellers. That is, the few city-dwellers who have not yet moved into 50-storey condo towers!
Last stop: retail therapy for Pam and dinner. Believe me when I say that shopping in Shanghai is for the rich. Eight-storey malls stuffed with designer boutiques from Europe and America cram areas such as West and East Nanjing Roads. You might think, as we did, that China is a land of knock-off Gucci bags and $25 Rollex watches. Not so. Rather, it is the land of $1000+ handbags and they are being grabbed up faster than you can ask, "What is Communism?" Pam got a couple of pairs of shoes (many Asian women wear hard-to-find size 5 shoes like her, so she was in her element) and then we each had a Japanese hotpot at Setan Department Store. (It was light years better than it sounds.) We struggled for half an hour to hail a rush-hour taxi to go back to the Radisson. Although we had checked out in the morning, the hotel kindly agreed to let us use the health club facilities to clean up after nine hours in the sun.
By 8:30pm, we were enroute back to Pudong International Airport for our Singapore Airlines flight to Singapore at 12:30am aboard the double-decker Airbus A380.
So, while Pam got shoes today and was thrilled with them, Dave's prize was his first-ever flight in the upper cabin of the A380,
from where I am enjoying the superb Singapore Airlines service
and writing this blog entry.
Onward to Brunei via Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Good night from 35,000 feet!
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