We had to leave the hotel bright and early at 6am this morning to catch our flight to Shanghai. We arrived at our hotel around noon. We are staying at the Radisson Shanghai New World and it is right in the center of the city on this amazing street. You should google a picture of the hotel to see how cool it is – we have a UFO thing on the top that is a rotating restaurant/bar. I have a room by myself for this portion of the trip which is awesome because our rooms are quite a bit smaller than last time. Shanghai is 1/3 the size of Beijing with the same amount of people so everything is just more compact here. I can already tell that I will like Shanghai much more than Beijing. It is much less “Chinese” and just seems more like New York or a big city you would find anywhere else in the world.
After we got settled in the hotel we went for lunch to our professor’s favorite dumpling place in all of China. It was really cool and it only makes dumplings and you can see the assembly line inside of them making them and then there is a lady frying them at the end out by the street so you can go pick them up after you order them. They were delicious and a great birthday lunch!
We returned to the hotel to meet our tour guide and we took a walk to the famous financial district skyline. We walked through this pedestrian mall with everything you could ever need. That is where I saw one of the huge posters for D.Rose. They had a big Nike store with a huge banner for the Chinese tennis player who just won the French Open so I think they are pretty excited about that here. Then we got to the river which has the financial district across and took some pictures. It has the third tallest building in the world – the one that looks like a bottle opener at the top. Perhaps we will be heading over there for some company visits in the near future.
We walked a little more to meet our bus and drove to the old city which had the Yu Gardens in the center. These are really pretty and used to be the Emperor’s gardens. The old city is just a giant bazaar selling touristy souvenirs but the architecture is just as you would think about the ancient Chinese. Then we went back to the hotel and I showered and we are getting ready to go to a group dinner at a restaurant in the middle of People’s Park. It is supposed to be really cool so I am excited to go and celebrate my birthday! I will fill you in later about how the celebration goes tonight.
No comments:
Post a Comment