First Day in Shanghai

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Got up rather late, so the kitchen was closed. Ordered a coffee anyway, which was very nicely made! Went out to the local shopping strip to get breakfast, found the local bakery and got some pastries. Overly sweet for Connor but just right for me! Made our way to thelocal train station, which was actually closer than we had originally imagined, amd bough tickets for each of us to People's square, only 3 yuan each! Tickets are like single use myki's, and their system is much for efficient.

Walked around in the park at People's square for a while taking pictures of all the amazing architecture. The buildings are sooo huge. Found the Shanghai Museum, but the line was too long and we were eager to do something interesting so decided not to wait and made our way to MoCa instead (museum of contemporary art). There we enjoyed a fantastic photography exhibition by one of China's preeminent young design and fashion photographers. Connor and I kept thinking of Leigh and how much she would have enjoyed it. We wanted to buy some prints to bring back but the attached gift shop didnt sell any. 😞

Underneath People's square station is a reasonably sized mall, a ,ixture of small cheap shops and more expensive chain fashion stores. Connor bought a scarf, we haggled, but are pretty sure we still got ripped off. Afterwards we went wandering the local streets and found a little restaurant for lunch. The menu had a few tofu dishes on it but they had run out, so I ended up ordering steamed potato chips and beans covered in brown sauce. Not that that was what it was called on the menu！On our way back、to the station we bought sim cards。

We then took the train to east nanjing road station， （heading to， as Connor put it 'Das Bund‘ 。 There we found an oversized and hugely crowded version of Bourke st Mall. It was amazing! There was even a little kewpiew mayyonaise branded train winding its way up and down carrying weary shoppers. Connor, Mr orientation, took us the wrong way, and we ended up walking 5km in the opposite direction from the Bund. The walk back was entertaining though, and once we got there, my what a skyline! One side of the river is taken up by enourmous skyscrapers of various design and size, the other by massive and beautiful early 20th centruy european architecture. After a long walk down the Bund, we made our way to yuyuan bazaar, in old town. There we found street stalls selling every knick knack you can imagine, in beautiful lantern lined streets.

We got lost trying to find the local vegetarian restaurant, but made our way there only to find the ordering system was so confusing, with no english or pictures, that we had to give up. (Found out later there was an english menu upstairs... grr) We ended up eating from the street stalls。 Walked back to the bund， then back to east、 nanjing rd station。 Probably did over 20km that day。 Back at our hostel we had cocktails （about three dollars each and at least twice as strong than in Melbourne) and played cards until we were too drunk to count properly. Bed time!

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