It's only been a few days since we got back from Suzhou and my last blog post, but I seem to have done absolutely loads since then!
On Friday, Mum and I went up to the Bund to do a bit of sightseeing, after we had lunch with two of my work colleagues near where I live. We wanted to go inside the hotels and more specifically, the bank, which is closed on weekends. I only ever seem to be on the Bund at the weekend, so it needed a specific week day trip! It was worth it! Despite it being torrential rain for most of the day, we still enjoyed ourselves. We went into the very posh Peace Hotel to their cafe Victor's, for a cup of tea (very expensive!) and to people watch out of the window. There were loads of bridal couples having their pictures taken in front of the hotel. We also got to use the posh toilets, with the expensive hand cream so it was worth it! We visited the Peace hotel's tiny museum too, which has lots of photos of famous guests. The whole hotel is very 1950s and completely fabulous!
We also went into the Bank of China, which is also 1950s style, and has this fabulous mosaic ceiling...
... and the government building, where I got shouted at by about 6 security guards for taking this photo of the mosaic ceiling. Oops!
We hopped on the ferry over to the Pudong side of the river and went up the Jinmao tower to pay the deposit for our birthday party, which is happening in the bar on the 88th floor. Such a cool place!
The photos are in the wrong order now, sorry! This was today at the Science and Technology Museum, ie, the Fake Market, where we brought some caps for Dad and I got a new rucksack, with cats on it, of course.
Earlier today, we went to the Flower and Bird Market, not too far from where I live. It was fascinating! The birds in their cages were a bit sad, but it was really interesting.
There were succulent plants everywhere. They are obviously the 'in thing' at the moment. I got 10 for 20p each! I'm going to make up a couple of pots as thank yous for various cat sitters. I also got a lovely white orchid, which is what I've been after for a while. I do love an orchid.
These are crickets...
They were making an absolute racket!
Back to Saturday now. Mum and I went to the Jade Buddha Pagoda, which was actually much bigger than we were expecting. It's a working monastery, so had big living quarters for the monks and canteens, etc. It was really quite commercialized. There was a shop selling 'Buddhist t-shirts' design your own. Very strange.
The actual jade Buddha was pretty big fora piece of jade, but we couldn't take photos of it. The rest of the grounds were lovely, and the buildings were very pretty.
On Saturday, we also went to M50, which is an area with more than 50 galleries and cafes. There is graffiti art everywhere, and some of the art galleries have amazing art in them.
This is a tree trunk that has been carved...
This is a piece of art where a little dog jumps up for the bone...
Oh, and one more of us at Victor's!
It's been lovely doing some touristy things! (Despite the rain)!
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