Shanghai
Shanghai was our final destination of our trip to China which had started off in Beijing then took in Jingshanling, Xian, Guilin, Yangshou, Longii, Suzhou and finally Tongli, during our 2 weeks we took 2 internal flights, an exciting trip on a bullet train countless tortuous car and minibus trips whilst getting to know 4 guides, a couple of whom were quite eccentric and one who was lovely (she thought Jim looked like Santa and made him pose with a Santa hat on so she could take a photo for her niece)
Our hotel
We went up market for our final few nights and booked into Les Suites des Orient on the Bund in Shanghai. It had spectacular views of the Huangpu River overlooking the Pudong area.
Boat trip on the Huangpu River
We eventually dragged ourselves away from the hotel room and explored the boardwalk along the Bund and took a boat trip up the river and back. Better illuminations that New York.
Unfortunately we only had 2 days in Shanghai and believe me it was so not long enough, we could have done with staying at least another few days but we had to go back to work 🙁
We had a day on our own so we asked our guide to write down the names of some places we wanted to go to to show to the taxi driver.
Jade Temple
Brilliant idea, the first taxi driver took us directly to the Jade Temple just as we asked. We weren’t so lucky the second time and ended up at a completely different museum!
This temple was built in 1882 and is the most famous in Shanghai.
It houses beautiful jade Buddha statues from Burma.
Shanghai Museum
After a bit of a walk through the People’s Park we found the Shanghai Museum. It’s huge so we had to chose which areas we wanted to visit as we only had the afternoon. We settled on visiting the sculpture, ceramics and costume sections.
By this time the humidity was getting to us so we made our way back to the hotel to freshen up for the evening, later we visited a local Italian restaurant just around the corner from the hotel which served the most delicious tiramisu.
Exhausted we glimpsed the stunning view from our suite before collapsing into a heavy sleep. Much needed as the next day we were off Suzhou (The Garden City) very early the next morning by high speed train.
