Shanghai - now this is a City with a capital C

After a lovely comfortable day in KL which is pretty much becoming our home away from home, we flew in Shanghai late last Thursday night or early Friday morning and arrived at our hostel exhausted and looking for a good night's sleep.  The place we are staying in is great.  Right behind the Marriott and a lovely big room and a beautiful hot shower.  Just what we needed.  Shanghai has been so enjoyable and our first day we spent wandering down Nanjing Road which must be one of the most incredible city streets in the world - busy, bustling, shopping, food, buskers.  It's all there.  It took us quite a few hours to get from our hostel down to the Bund where we took in the Peace Hotel, the Customs House and the Bank of Shanghai.  My favourite was the Peace Hotel and John's the Bank.  These are buildings all built in the 1920s by the British and are amazing.  The most beautiful ceilings which add light and colour to the rooms they umbrella.  We did a look around first from the restaurant atop the Marriott - from the 36th floor and got a look at sprawling Shanghai.

We have never seen such an array of skyscrapers - each one almost a architectural masterpiece.  Our friend, Bob Reuben, recommended we go to a place called Xuijihu - not sure of the spelling - to see cityscape at its grandest and we headed there yesterday morning.  Standing on the overpass there and looking around was an architectural overload and really worth seeing.  From there we headed to a village of Qibao.  Now village is hardly the word but they have a section of old town well preserved and we spent a few hours wandering around the wooden Chinese houses and over the bridges, eating glorious and tasty street food and generally enjoying the balmy spring weather.

In total contrast, last night we rewalked Nanjing Road on Saturday night.  What a blast.  The lights are like nothing I have ever seen.  Something you can never capture in a photograph.  There were people everywhere and you wouldn't go many steps without being intrigued by what a group of people were watching.  Dancing, singing, acting buskers were everywhere.  A really popular pastime here for women's exercise is they learn a dance.  Not zumba style but to their own level and they perform as a group in the mall.  Mind you not a smile on any of their faces!!!  We ended our walk on the Bund looking across at Pudong and the light show that it puts on every night.  We also called in to the Peace Hotel and listened to a famous Chinese jazz band.  The Jazz Bar there was once voted the best bar in the world!!!!!  The average age of the band is 75 and the drummer is 90 - so hope for us yet.

We leave this afternoon for Nanjing.  We have really enjoyed our time in this big big city.