As with most Chinese city's Shanghai is a Chinese city. It has the typical street vendors, spitting old men, metro system and McDonald's. But..a charm very different to Beijing. I loved it immediately. We caught the metro from the railway station and headed to our accommodation. Our hostel was slightly out of the main city centre but it is very close to the metro line so we didn't mind a little travelling for the savings on accommodation.
After checking in we did what we always do in a new city, we went on the hunt for some food! Straight back on the metro we thought we would incorporate a food hunt with booking our onward travel. So we headed for the train ticket booking office just 5 stops on the metro. It was amazing to see the contrast of the rooftops in Shanghai (metro is up very high). The old derelict housing was intertwined with brand new sparkly mirrored sky scrapers. Quite a sight!
After a relatively easy ticket booking scenario (English speaking attendant...pheww!) we were lucky enough to have stumbled into an area with a massive array of choice to munch on. We opted to what looked like an upmarket Chinese noodle soup fast food chain. It was FAST FOOD indeed but far from the taste you would normally expect. I had an amazing beef style soup with melt in the mouth beef cubes and a yummy broth with lots and lots of noodles. Dave had similar with an odd sweet rice side. With our full belly's we headed back to our sleeping area and stumbled across a profiterole vendor....I'm not going into detail here as it makes me sad living with out these absolutely divine beautiful magnificent...OK enough...they were yummy!
We went for a beer in the hostel bar and met 3 Irish travellers (not Gypsy's just backpackers) ended up having a few more beers than planned!
The following day started badly but ended well. The bad start was that someone stole my leggings from the washing line at the hostel. Why? I pity the traveller that is so desperate they have to steal my primark 2quid leggings! It got better though. We went right into the city and crossed over the water at the Bund The sight across the river was pretty impressive it was just a shame about the constant smog that generally suffocates China.
We has a Japanese lunch for a change (it is quite different) and mourned for our cancelled Japan trip. But we became optimistic about India! We crossed back over to The Bund (the major hub of Shanghai) and had a little look around. We then headed to the famous fake markets. They sound just as they are however they were trying to charge real prices for fake things. A joke really. Very noisy and an annoying place to be. I think we got sick of it around half an hour into our browse and left! We visited a few parks too. Nice to see some green space in such a big city. That evening we found a great Sushi place. Normally i would only eat sushi for lunch or a snack as i find it doesn't really fill me up to much but this stuff was amazing. The guys made whatever you ordered fresh. We had a delicious mushroom concoction with all the Japanese necessity's miso soup, squid wasabi salad and some potato salad too. In fact we enjoyed it so much we went back later in the trip for lunch! Other gastronomic delights also included a great Muslim hole in the wall (street kitchen) where we got a great meal for less than a quid each. We also found a gourmet supermarket where i managed to score some Budweiser and some good bread in preparation for our 36 hour train stint right across the country to Chongching. Actually looking forward to it!
We has a Japanese lunch for a change (it is quite different) and mourned for our cancelled Japan trip. But we became optimistic about India! We crossed back over to The Bund (the major hub of Shanghai) and had a little look around. We then headed to the famous fake markets. They sound just as they are however they were trying to charge real prices for fake things. A joke really. Very noisy and an annoying place to be. I think we got sick of it around half an hour into our browse and left! We visited a few parks too. Nice to see some green space in such a big city. That evening we found a great Sushi place. Normally i would only eat sushi for lunch or a snack as i find it doesn't really fill me up to much but this stuff was amazing. The guys made whatever you ordered fresh. We had a delicious mushroom concoction with all the Japanese necessity's miso soup, squid wasabi salad and some potato salad too. In fact we enjoyed it so much we went back later in the trip for lunch! Other gastronomic delights also included a great Muslim hole in the wall (street kitchen) where we got a great meal for less than a quid each. We also found a gourmet supermarket where i managed to score some Budweiser and some good bread in preparation for our 36 hour train stint right across the country to Chongching. Actually looking forward to it!
As usual my blog entry is filled with food...i should be much fatter!
Next stop Chongching....
To see our pictures from Shanghai please click on the link below;
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/ShanghaiChina9thTo13thSeptember2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCO2U9-fXhbD1Yg#
https://picasaweb.google.com/112941139607408893724/ShanghaiChina9thTo13thSeptember2011?authkey=Gv1sRgCO2U9-fXhbD1Yg#
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