The Peace Hotel and Shanghai Tower

These photos have all come out in a backwards order, so you'll just have to take my word for it what order we did things in.

Our weekend plan of doing something new every weekend is still going strong - this weekend we went up the Shanghai Tower (the tallest one. Second tallest building in the world) and we stayed over night at the fabulous Peace Hotel on the Bund.

We have had Matt's University friend Tom, and his girlfriend Sian staying with us from England this week.  They arrived on Tuesday, and while it has been lovely to see them, they came without any sort of plan of what they wanted to do.  So, it's been a little hard work during the week when our schedules were so off - we were going to bed early and getting up early for work and they were getting up at midday and going to bed at midnight.  We'd worked out our schedules by the weekend though, which was good because it was the mid-autumn festival on Friday, so everyone in China had an extra day off.

We spent ours going up the Shanghai Tower, which was surprisingly empty considering the fact that it was a bank holiday.  Very strange.  The view from the top is incredible.  You can see so far!  And Jinmao Tower and the Bottle Opener look tiny compared.  You are looking down on their rooftops, and it all feels very strange and distorted.

The entrance to the tower is very cool - there are pictures of all the highest buildings in the world at various points throughout the last 100 years - most were in New York City up until fairly recently.  There was also an olympic torch from the Chinese Olympics.

After the tower, and a quick bite to eat in Starbucks, we caught the ferry over the river to Puxi.  This was the first time the ferry has gone in the wrong direction!  You always take a bit of a gamble getting on the ferry, since everything is written in Chinese, but this time we went upstream instead of downstream towards the Bund.  We ended up catching a taxi to get to the Peace Hotel for check in time.

Check in was a bit of a nightmare. At first they told us that we had booked just standard rooms, so none of the food was included (this was the whole point of our stay at this very expensive hotel), but that got sorted, and we ended up with an upgrade to a Bund view because of it.  Then we were told that because I didn't have my passport (it's at the VISA office getting my new work VISA), that I wouldn't be able to stay!!!  We ended up being allowed to check in, then Matt and I had to go to the police station with our floor's butler (in full on tail coat uniform) a 10 minute walk from the hotel, so that they could confirm that my photocopy of my passport was really me.  Absolutely ridiculous!  Oh well, we managed to get into the hotel anyway.  

The hotel is beautiful, and very art deco. It is very famous in Shanghai and has had lots of famous people stay there over the years.    Our room was lovely, and you could just about see the skyscrapers from our window.  The corridor was very Disney's Tower of Terror looking, which was fitting since we were there on Friday 13th, on the day of the full moon festival!  We tried to go out to the bund in the evening, and discovered where all the people in China had been hiding - on the Bund! I've never seen it so busy. We couldn't even walk out onto the street there were so many people there!  We did manage to sneak onto the terrace bar for a look at the full moon and the skyline though.

We also had an hour in the famous jazz bar at the Peace Hotel, which has had the same 6 jazz musicians playing there for over 50 years.  They were great, and the atmosphere was very cool.

On Saturday, Matt and I checked out after a nice breakfast and went home for some time with the kitties.  Sian and Tom went to do some sightseeing.  We all went to the fake market in the evening, and then to the LCM Mall a few stops away from us for dinner in Pizza Express.  We had been to Sichuan Citizen earlier on in the week with Andy and Becky, but met them again for brunch, along with Vicky and Adam at Tacolicious, my new favourite place in the French Concession in Puxi.  A few of us went to a crepe place for dessert after our delicous tacos.  They do such good ginger beer at Tacolicous.  It happened to be one of the members of staff's birthday, so there was a quiz about rap happening.  Every correct question got a shot of tequila, so Matt and Adam had a few!  It was fun!  Sian and Tom went out to a museum after brunch and then we all had an evening in watching a movie.

So, a busy, but nice weekend.  Sian and Tom are off to Cambodia for a week today, and then we will have them back for 2 days (1 of which they will be at Disney and we will meet them at the Cheesecake Factory - yum!)

The bottom photo is of how Snowball now sleeps.  On my head, or on my pillow.  He is like my Snowball hat!