Snow in Shanghai....

We arrived in Shanghai around lunch time after sleeper train 2 (getting used to them now) having only eaten pot noodles for the duration of the train journey, we were in need of proper food so set off in search. After 2 hours walking the streets around the river we finallly found McDonalds.

Feeling refreshed we went for a walk along the Bund, the famous riverside in shanghai. It was a lovely clear day and there were great views of Pudong, the business district across the river. Our first night was dinner with the rest of our group in a local restaurant that the group before us had discovered. It was also at this point we discovered the group before us had been stuck in Shangai for a week as there were no trains out due to the snow storms across China which were causing mass destruction. With that in mind we braced ourselves for a long stay here, luckily there seems to be lots to do.

After dinner we went for another walk along the bund, at night all the buildings are lit up and it looks more like america than china, it's relly impressive. walking along the prominade there are loads of stalls selling many different objects that light up, my favourite were the light up wheels you could attach to your shoe. I managed to resist though.

Our first full day in shanghai started off nice and bright, we decided to go to the famous Shanghai museum as we had heard it was the best museum in china. Turns out to be one of the biggest museums i have ever seen! Some of the exhibitions were relly interesting, there was embroidery and caliigraphy showing the various historicl stages of china, lots of pottery and bronze work. ALso some slightly less interesting displays of letter seals and ancient chinese coins (struggled to tell the difference between the thousands on show....) after an entire morning in the museum we left to discover that it had started snowing, and continued to snow for the rest of the day.

in the evening we were off to see the famous shanghai acrobats, due to the bad weather we couldn't get a taxi so had a mad dash around to catch a bus then run around asking people where the theatre was,....we made it to the theatre 5 mins late, but negotiating the marble ice covered steps were a liiiiiiittle tricky....15mins later we were in the theatre!

the acrobats were fantastic! ...at times we could hardly watch and just cowered in our seats as people were thrown, spun and launched all over the place from great heights. the highlight of the show was a steel spherical cage which first one..then two..then three. ...then four.....then five!! acrobats on motorcycles proceeded to whiz around and around, ....no idea how they dont crash into onew nother

on our final day in shanghai we walked around the french concesion area and pudong district taking in the sites, before having a few beers and heading to one of Shanghais most famous night spots...the Cotton Club, where we listened to some live jazz

the next day we made our way to shanghi train station for the long feared 22hour train journey to Guilin. after the worst winter to hit China in 50 years and countless tales of terror juourneys from other groups we were unsure as to whether we would actually be getting a train, or likley to be stranded in Shanghai for the rest of eternity. worse still, if we mnaged to get the train...how mny days might we be on there.......

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