The arrival and adventures of Chris in Shanghai

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Hello everyone from all of us...that makes three of us, including Chris, who is here for one month over Christmas and the new year.

It's great having Chris here, and apart from the fact that he has brought Christmas with him (see previous blog) it is simply amazing to share our Shanghai adventure with him.

From the start we've been storing up places for him to see, and so far since he arrived his itinerary has been to buy a bike (on his second day) and since then we've been covering the waterfront (or Haungpu riverfront!)

Chris himself has requested that we shelve the bikes for a while, since as he says, we're whizzing past some of the sights he'd prefer to be walking past and savouring, so perhaps we'll have to build in a little walking time...but in the meantime we've seen the following, as the pictures will attest: Xin Tian Di (our favorite collection of restaurants and just general 'chill' place) and two of the restaurants there we've gone to are "Din Tai Feng" (voted one of the 10 best restaurants in the world according to the New York Times} and one of my personal faves, "Kabb" where we had breakfast this morning. We've seen the Chinese movie (with English subtitles, of course!) "The Assembly" which was a very violent, but intriguing story about one man's part in the war between the communists and the nationalists, and the Korean War.

Poor Chris has had his share of trials and tribulations: even though he himself says he's getting away with "jetlag lite", he arrived on antibiotics since he'd had an abcess erupt in one of his teeth, and since has had to contend with having both a root canal, and a filling. And this was on top of arriving with cold sores, to boot! But the good news is that they're going to cost him a third the price he was quoted in T.O....still, to have to undergo these procedures on a holiday has been as much as...well, having a root canal!!

Yesterday we went to the 38th floor of the Merriot Hotel, from where we could see all the way to the Bund

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