Rather Late Blogs (3)

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So it was back to Shanghai for us! Fortunately finding our new hostel wasn't quite so traumatic being much nearer to People's Square and giving us better transport links for further site seeing - although in reality there wasn't all that much more to see!!!

Our first stop was the Shanghai Museum (this beckoned particularly, as in our breif interlude in Hangzhou the skies had opened and the temperature had dropped considerably!) Thus the idea of a warm museum briefly appealed. Entrance fee was quite low too! Always a bonus where we are involved...however in Jen's opinion (and I can see where she is coming from) the coin collection was a little too extensive for its own good. However, the clothes and masks were pretty cool depicting the differences between the regions, the seasons and the decades. The Jade and Bronze Galleries were in fact pretty cool. In all sorts of shapes and sizes and showing some of the techniques involved which wasn't too bad at all. Unfortunately the calligraphy gallery left a little to be desired having all the descriptions in Chinese...despite the fact that they were written in Chinese originally!!!! Lunacy in my opinion!!! Aside from that it was indeed warm...although it did lead to a backache (on my part) and knee ache (on Jen's) (Such spritely young and healthy things!!!) That evening saw one of our best decisions so far, whereby we decided to go and see the Shanghai acrobats, which were a combination of magic tricks, acrobatics, ballet and dancing and were pretty impressive and highly enjoyable!

Our remaining day in Shanghai was spent in the Pudong area (the commercial centre as previosuly visited) where we had to re-take some of the photos we had lost on Jen's camera. We had intended to go to a place called Lupu Bridge which was said to offer uninterrupted views of the city...which were fairly convincingly interrupted by the rolling fog and driving rain...and we decided, not really worth the effort. And so, photos taken we were free to head back! This led to us doing our laundry! BIG mistake, the driving rain and not so hospitable hostel meant that drying the clothes was a near impossibility where we also discovered that there is a particular dearth of DIY laundrettes in Shanghai. Thus it was with considerably weighed down bags, wearing very few warm clothes that we left Shanghai, on route for Beijing. After a breif coffee with Lis to say toodle-oo and thank her immensely for her guidance! Thanks lissy-lady!!!!!

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