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Published: November 19th 2014
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Happy Everyday!
A good place for Milk Teas We took a taxi back to the bus station in Tunxi to head to Hangzhou where we would take the train back to Shanghai. We were walking onto the bus to find our seats when I heard a familiar voice... I looked up to see that our Korean friends were sitting directly behind us on their way to Hangzhou. They were excited to see us and hands were shook all around. What are the chances!
Once last time in Hangzhou, we said our good byes and headed for the train station. Luckily we were able to get a train within the next hour and were off to Shanghai. Trying to get a taxi from a couple streets away from a metro station proved impossible, extra impossible when the couple taxis that did pull over couldn't recognize the Chinese address on our hotel confirmation and drove away. Luckily, a nice older man that pulled over in his taxi called the hotel and took us there. Our hotel was stunning. The historical Astor House Hotel boasts guests from the past 100+ years such as Albert Einstein, President Grant, and Charlie Chapman, the interior was beautiful and we even had a view of
the historical Waibaidu bridge and the downtown skyline from our window.
We went for a walk that night looking for dinner and stumbled on a little diner around the corner. A man, presumably the owner, stuck his head out the open door with a lit smoke stuck to his lip and a mop in his hand, "Come in, sit down!". Normally we would keep walking around but the place was hopping and we were starving, he showed us to a table right away. Didn't take long to realize that he wasn't just washing the floors when we came in but cleaning up the mess he was making. Literally right behind Binnson, the man was catching live fish with a net from a crate and putting them in a bucket that was heading to the kitchen. Definitely one of those times that you regret leaving the camera at home! The food was great too.
Our last day in Shanghai turned into a bit of a foodie day since we had seen most of the tourist attractions the first weekend we were here. We read about a popular dumpling place and set out for it first thing. The reception at
the hotel wrote down a building name in Chinese and circled a place on the East Nanjing road and we were off. Along the way we decided that if we saw a line up forming at a food stall, we were going to get in it regardless of what was at the the front. Results were phenomenal; a shame and likely a blessing that we were finding these places on our very last day. Fried buns, ice cream bars, dumplings, delish!
The dumpling place we were looking for was not at the place our hotel told us about, not even close. We had tried to find the location online before but there was never a clear address, hence why we asked reception. Finding some wifi on the street- we looked at the map our hotel gave us and tried again to find it. We kept walking down West Nanjing for the first location for a LONG time to a side street with some abandoned buildings- guess that location was incorrect. The things we do for dumplings! Finally a few more streets down, in a mall that is basically connected to a metro station, we found our prized dumplings. The
line was long and through a small pick up window you could see a bunch of workers making dumplings at a record rate. Grabbing our dumplings, we crammed into the tiny sweaty hallway of a restaurant and sat at a table with a couple other people to slurp up some good authentic soup dumplings.
Satisfied and very full, we took the metro across the river to wander amongst the skyscrapers. There was a fun network of pedestrian overpasses that we walked around on waiting for the sun to disappear and the lights to come on before heading back to our hotel.
Another trip comes to an end!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
Yum
looks great