Back To Shanghai: The Bund, Shopping and a 1 Yuan Charge!

And then we were back in Shanghai!

Our trip began in Shanghai almost 6 weeks ago. I cannot believe that we are back and have made it full circle! I won't lie, Asia is hard for this long with this much traveling and exploring. But we did it and I am incredibly grateful for and proud of @brandonfrye and I for moving through all the obstacles, savoring all the sacred moments and having an amazing trip!

Since we were up for almost 24 hours yesterday traveling from Bali to Shanghai, when we woke up at 2pm it was no surprise! Our hotel in Shanghai is amazing! I feel like a princess and the pictures don't do it any justice so you will have to take my word for it. If you want to look it up you can, its called Metropolo Jinjiang Hotel Classiq. When I look it up on booking it shows something called the Golden Tulip. Our cab driver dropped us off here last night, they seem to have our information but on our map it showed us staying at a different location. So, to be honest, I'm not even sure we are in the right place. But its nice and did not cost us a fortune, the shower is amazing and the bed is incredibly comfortable!

Our plan today was to just relax, which we did a great job at! We finally made our way out and about and headed towards The Bund. This is a great place to see the skyscrapers across the river, including the "Pearl" as they call it! A bulbous looking tower stretching up towards the sky! Our hotel is right by this area knows as Peoples Way, something like that, its lined with all kinds of shops that we would see in America. It's more like Time Square than anything. In fact we were hoping to find a tshirt with Chinese writing on it and could not find a single one! We did find some really cool shops with a bizarre system, there are people manning different stations, you decide if you want something, they hold on to it and give you a slip. When you are done you pay and they all magically appear to give you your stuff. We went in a couple of shops like this just to see how it worked and kinda play with it! We bought some neat stuff thought and the prices were totally reasonable!

We have been having trouble finding food... weird, I know! You would think that it would be on every street corner, but there is a shop on every street corner and KFC or McDonalds so we were perplexed about where people eat. Then we stumbled upon it! A food court. From the street it looks like a few stalls, but upon entry there is an escalator that takes you into a basement with tons of places to eat! Cheap too! There isn't much English in the secret underground food courts of Shanghai, but we figured out vegetarian and ended up with a bowl of really tasty noodles and veggies! We made our way back to our hotel with a pit stop at little stall that looked like it had desserts. Chocolate steam buns are my new favorite! In fact, here it is, after midnight and I'm wishing I could go down and get another one!

Back at our hotel we ran into the Great Firewall of China again when we simply wanted to lay in bed and watch a show on Amazon Prime, or Netflix, or Vudu, or any other number of sites that we cannot access in China...

With the sun finally set we walked back down to the Bund to get a picture of the skyline at night! It's so beautiful but it is crowded! We thought this place was busy during the day, boy were we wrong! You know those pictures you see in aerial view of what looks like thousands of people crossing a crosswalk? We were in the middle of that tonight! I wish there was a picture that would do it justice. Police were in the streets making sure that humans were not in the streets and stayed on the sidewalks. There was a clear flow of people traffic and I'm grateful we just happened to be on the right side of the road. It's like a festival, every single night! They even sell flashy glow in the dark things to make it extra fun. You can bet that I bought light up cat ears too! Blue ones!

Capturing our photo of The Bund we quickly decided to return back to our hotel. We are literally peopled out! We knew there was a restaurant by our hotel so we aimed for that. We got rice, noodles, broccoli and green beans with garlic. The best part was also the most annoying part. I don't remember exactly but our bill was something like 52, so @brandonfrye went to pay and we had just 51 so he was going to pay with his card. The lady literally charged 1 to his card! It still makes me laugh! We ate our beans, did not regret not getting the turtle, whole chicken, tripe or bull frog and quickly headed back to our quiet hotel room!

Now because of the Great Firewall of China I have to figure out how in the world I'll get pictures into this post, but I'll try to get some up for ya! Heres the hint: email them to yourself from your phone to a hotmail address, make a new one if you have to. Then upload to OneCloud and save to your computer and post!