I Can't Belive We Live Here!

I have said this pretty much every hour, on the hour since we arrived.  I love it here.  It's a vibrant, exciting, bustling, wonderful place full of absolute nutters.  Today I saw a man walking along the road with a bucket containing a live fish in water.  He was just strolling along, not a care in the world.  Crazy.

Anyway, our first weekend here, or day 3 and 4 (is that it!!!) have been very nice.  Of course, we were up with the dawn again.  Matt got up to potter on Saturday morning and I managed to doze for a while.  We decided on a fairly lazy day in an effort to get rid of the jet lag, but i'm not sure that was the way to go.  I ended up only being awake for 3 hours, before needing a nap!  We went to the Life Hub shopping centre for a wander around.  There is a shop called E Land, which is all things English.  It has a cafe attached that does afternoon teas!  We got an ice tea in a cafe called Wagas that had been recommended to us (quite expensive.  £4 for a juice), then wandered down the road to see what was in the opposite direction of the interesting street with lots of local shops (not much), and back to the Life Hub to the Beer Factory for a Mojito, and what Matt describes as an 'odd tasting beer'.  I guess he will get used to it!  The Life Hub was very busy in the evening, and is lovely. All of the water features light up and there are fairy lights everywhere.We were so tired, we just got a couple of steamed buns from our local shop and went home for a TV night.

On Sunday we decided to change tactics.  We need to power through.  We're not going to get used to the heat if we stay in air con all the time, and we're not going to get over our jet lag if we don't get out and about.  This was a good move, as it's Sunday evening here now and I feel much better than I have so far (I did still have a nap though).

We were awake at 4 again, so decided to just get up and were headed for the metro by 7am.  The trains are big, air conditioned, and quite easy to use.  They have countdowns to train arrivals that are accurate to the second.  In the underground tunnels, there are digital adverts running along the inside of the tunnel.  They must be a mile long, as you can see the advert for ages between stops.  Apparently you can buy an Oyster card sort of ticket, but we weren't sure how, so just got singles (40p each, for each way).  We got to a stop closest to the Bund, and Matt got a pancake thingy with an egg fried into it and a sausage for breakfast (I had fruit at home.  Won't make the mistake of going without breakfast again any time soon!), and we had a 15 minute walk to the river front.  It was 30 degrees by 7.30am.  In the shade it's actually bearable, and there was some cloud cover today, but in the sun it is unbearable.  We were drenched in sweat within about 3 minutes.  The summer is not a good time to visit Shanghai, we have decided!

The bund is a historically famous strip of buildings along the river.  It has a wide promenade that offers incredible views of the business district of Pudong (the district we live in, but it's huge, about 30 minutes from our flat on the metro).  The bund has lots of banks and historic hotels and is a feast for the eyes.  The historic beauty on one side of us, and across the river, the shiny glass sky scrapers.

The building with the pink balls is the Oriental Pearl TV Tower.  The one that looks like a bottle opener is the Shanghai World Financial Center.  It's in the top 10 of the world's tallest buildings - i've just checked, it's number 6, 432 m high. The very tall twisty one is the Shanghai Tower, which is the second tallest building in the world, beaten only by the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The Shanghai Tower is 632 meters high!

We didn't walk along the promenade the whole time because it was just too hot.  There is a walkway slightly lower that gives some shade.  It's wall is made up of thousands of potted plants, which were getting a haircut today.

We decided to do as the locals do and get the 20p ferry across the river.  The air con was nice too!  It took about 5 minutes.  Then we sat on a terrace outside Starbucks with a (surprisingly cheap) ice tea and watched the boats on the river.

Our view from Starbucks!

We wandered up to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower to have a look. It's huge up close, so I can't even imagine how big the other buildings are!  There was a huge queue to get in as this was now about 11 o'clock.  I think the key is to go early.

Nearby there is a designer shopping centre, which we had a wander around, before heading to the food court for ... you guessed it, my new obsession.  Dumplings.  They are just so tasty!

There was a supermarket in the shopping centre, so we got a few staples to keep us going.  We had a huge order of things arrive from an online delivery place yesterday, so we are fairly well kitted out with towels, kettle, knives, bins, washing up stuff, that sort of thing.  We have a few more bits coming tomorrow, and the coat hangers we ordered are minuscule, so we will still do the school trip to IKEA I think.  But for now, we're having a chilled evening, before Matt has to go to the airport tomorrow to pick someone up at 6.45am.

Two posts today, so make sure you look below...