After being in Japan, where everything is so clean and pristine (right up my street!) and the people are so polite and curteous, Shanghai came as a bit of shock – loads of people, lots of noise (everyone shouts above one another to be heard) and lots of litter on the streets. I imagined Shanghai to be very sleek, cosmopolitan and more civil than Beijing. I wouldnt say that Shanghai isnt civil but Beijing totally outlived my expectations – the Olympics most certainly the driver of this; the city had to clean up its act, people werent allowed to hack on the floor, which they do quite a lot here – I cringe everytime I hear it and out of protest (which I have no right really as I am in their country!) give the person a look of disgust!
Take 1 being fairly short (as we come back to Shanghai in a week to go to the Grand Prix – ow yeah baby! – just in case we hadnt mentioned!!), we picked off a few main ‘to do’s’ with a wander into People’s Square, a walk down one of the main shopping streets (where M&S has just opened – was nice to see a bit of home!) and a walk down The Bund. This is a main street which hugs the river and has amazing views of the skyline. We took the ‘sight seeing tunnel’ (which was crap for the 50 Yuan it cost) under the river to admire the view from the other side and to venture up to the top of Jinmao Tower (was China’s tallest building until the Shanghai World Financial Centre opened next door literally just a few days ago!), to have a bit of ‘Darren’ time and lavish in the Cloud 9 bar on the 87th floor of the Grand Hyatt – was fab as was the view!
Our day was finished off with food in a European-esq / jazz bar and a few games of tennis on the Wii! Awesome! Its a good job the bar was quiet as Dan and me got into the game quite seriously – you know how competitive we are!
We decided to satisfy our love of trains by taking the Maglev train to the airport – its the world fastest train…check the picture sequence:
So now off the Xi’an & Chengdu and back to Shanghai in a week for Take 2.
