Quick Trip to Shanghai: Day 2 and 3

We started the day with donuts and a trek out to where Chad would take the LSAT on Sunday. It was quite the journey. It took about an hour and a half to get out there. After that we decided to walk around the French Concession and on the way saw this cool library.

The Shanghai Library

Before we could find the French Concession (some streets that were on the map were not actually streets in real life) I started feeling really weird. I'm not sure why or what it was exactly, but after reviewing my food intake for the day we realized it maybe could be that all I had eaten so far today was donuts. So we decided to try to find a thai/indian fusion place I read about. To get there we had to go through this swanky mall.

It had a Morton's!

and a lot of blue Christmas trees

And pass this thing....

Turns out the Thai place didn't exist anymore, at least we couldn't find it, so we decided to just go to the cute little cafe that was across the street from the mystery Thai place.

Do you see that? Multi-grain bread, a salad, veggies everywhere... worth it!

Funny sign inside the bathrooms in the subway station

After getting some food in my belly I felt much better and we continued our sightseeing. We went to this really cool section of town that was all traditional buildings and stuff. It was fun because right next to an authentic teahouse there was a Papa Johns and a Dairy Queen.

From the outside looking in, that street is the classic Chinese style architecture

Panorama Magic.

I thought it would be really funny to scroll through the panaromic shot and see me copying the random snowman, but turns out I'm right in the middle and very easy to spot. It's pretty much centered on me. Good job Chad.

Guess who is grumpy?

These pics look a lot cooler on Chad's phone than when they're exported to the computer....

The raw image in all its glory

I was kinda over pictures at this point but Chad wanted me to go be in it...

This is a phenomena we see quite frequently in China... human mannequins with animal heads... it's always a little weird and unsettling. This one's for you Brad.

After those adventures, we tried to decide what to have for dinner. It was a tough choice because after seeing Papa John's we wanted pizza, but since we haven't had much dairy in the last 4 months we were a little unsure what it would do to our bodies and we didn't need Chad sick the night before his LSAT, so we decided it was time for Peter's. It was quite the trek to get there, but it was down this adorable alley way with a million other little restaurants...we neglected to take photos, but believe me, it was super cute! And dinner was amazing.

Chimichangas! 

a REAL hamburger! 

After dinner and a trek to a HUGE supermarket (a Carrefour with multiple floors) we headed back to get the test boy some sleep.  Sunday was a bit of a whirlwind. I went and dropped Chad off at his LSAT... well the plan was to ride the subway with him then head off to church, but he forgot to give me the key to the place we were staying so after he left I had to make a mad dash to catch him so I could get the key. Lucky for him he realized he forgot his passport (I had it though) so he was actually able to take the test! I realized I wouldn't be able to make it to church on time so I headed back and did a little window shopping. The street we were staying on had some pretty awesome malls and lots of high end shopping so it was fun to just walk around. I then made the trek to church to go to the 10:30 time slot only to find out it was cancelled that week. wah wah... no real life church for me. After his test Chad and I went to get Papa John's and then caught our train back to Weifang. The pizza was AMAZING but tiny and we wanted about 5 more after it.

Did I mention the place we stayed was goregous? It's a friend's parent's apartment and I LOVE her style. I took pictures so I can recreate it someday. It was the perfect blend of, well, everything.

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Quick trip to Shanghai: Day 1

Did you know that we say Shanghai wrong? You probably say it Shang as in hang with a ssss in front. Well you're wrong. It's pronounced as if you were saying Shong. Yeah I don't know why we do that (we being Americans) anyway Chad and I visited Shanghai the other weekend because he had to take the LSAT and I was not going to just hang out in Weifang while he was in a city that is supposed to have a Peter's Tex-Mex Grill. (If you don't know the significance of that you need to read up on our Chengdu adventures!)

Friday morning was a bit hectic.We booked tickets for a 10:40am departure and I taught until 9:40, so we had an hour to make sure we had everything, get to the train station, get through the ticket line and get on the train. The train literally stops for one minute and then goes, so people STRESS to you how you need to make sure you're early in case the train is because it WILL NOT WAIT. I don't know if you know this about me but I have become a very anxious traveler in the last 6 years or so. I don't know why... I remember in college I would walk up to the gate as they were doing last call and be pretty happy and stress free about it all. Now I factor in like 5 hours of buffer JUST IN CASE. I think it comes from when I missed a flight to school because of LA traffic- even after a pretty amazing sprint through LAX's parking lots and terminals and that I had to stay in LA and spent the evening calling professors about missed classes and late finals and stuff. Blah- flashbacks... anyway I digress... the travel gods were kind to us and we got to the train station without too many issues and got on our train.

Train selfie! I Am LOVING my hair in this pic... I tried to recreate it and I have not done as well

I'm trying to demonstrate how much leg room I have! You might recall our Chengdu hard seats and how cramped they were... not the case here, it was LOVELY!

I got pretty excited about seeing nuclear power plants. Chad was nonplussed. 

It was a SUPER pretty ride between Weifang and Shanghai so I tried to take pictures to capture it. These do not do it justice. It was a pretty nice 5 hour trip there, with pretty skies and scenery until we got to around Nanjing.

Got to Shanghai selfie... I was a bit grumpy

So fun story here.... Chad and I were riding the subway to where we would be staying and he mentioned Chipotle. I thought about how good it was and how good it sounded (we only had snacks on the train so I was STARVING) and I started to cry because I couldn't just go to a Chipotle and eat. Like there were actual tears.

We got off the subway and out into Shanghai so a picture of Chad was needed to celebrate

Do you see that ENGLISH!!!

So this loveliness greeted us right out of the subway. I saw it and said to Chad "DID YOU SEE THAT?" He thought it was a Burger King at first and was like "meh" and I was like NO and then he got excited. We might have gotten donuts everyday we were there. The old fashioned glazed was amazing- not China donuts amazing but real donuts amazing.

I loved walking down the street in Shanghai. It was super cute and decorated. Sorry they are blurry I was trying to walk, eat a donut and take a picture without stopping any of those things.

After we got to where we were staying (thanks again Ansley!) we dropped off our stuff and immediately got to work on deciding where to eat. We kinda decided we didn't need to have any Chinese food, we have had plenty of that here, so we want food from other places in the world. We decided on an all your can eat Japanese place and headed out. I didn't take many pictures because we sat in our own private room with one other couple, so I didn't want to be that person. But the way this worked was we could pick whatever we wanted from the menu and either it was brought in from the kitchen (like the sushi) or it was cooked in front of us by those floating hands below. I kept ordering past when Chad was full because I was determined to get our money's worth out of it haha. 

Minutes after telling the other couple we were with that we are getting the hang of chopsticks Chad dropped a huge chunk of his fried banana in his tea. 

This is a THREE story escalator! Yeah, 4th floor straight to the 7th, they aren't kidding around.

After our bellies were significantly full, we decided to head to "The Bund". It's pretty much the classic Shanghai skyline picture you see everywhere, so we had to see it for ourselves. What's fun is you can see the pollution of it! It looks like it might be rainy or foggy, but it's not. That's the air pollution. Earlier in the day the pollution count was so high it broke records. Yay for our lungs!

From across the street...

Trying to take selfies... this one I didn't like my eyes so we went with....

Crazy face... Chad didn't like it... so we went with...

Serious.. meh... let's just give up

Don't you people need to go to bed??? It's 10pm! (Remember we live out in the sticks, so we are the last people awake at 10:30 pm)

Sweet Panoramic Action

Can you spot the difference?

If you said crazy LSD pirate ship, you are right. If you said anything else, then really? Unless you said that the tower is lit up, in which case - good for you! You are basically Monk. Or Shawn Spencer. And if you noticed the tower but don't know Monk or Shawn Spencer then we are probably not friends and why are you reading my blog? Let me know in the comments, I am really curious how you found me.

After The Bund we headed back to where we were staying and slept in an amazingly comfortable bed. I think it was the first time since Chengdu that I got more than an hour of uninterrupted sleep. It was glorious! Once again, glory be to Ansley and the remaining Birds.

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