Thursday, 15 September 2016
China: Day 3 - Shanghai
Our first day in China - day 3 of our trip. (Day 1 was flight time and Day 2 was lost crossing the dateline.)
We awoke in our hotel after 2 hours "sleep" - our flight from Beijing to Shanghai was delayed and we did not get to our hotel until about 4:30 AM. Kudos to the tour company Nexus Tours for having a driver waiting at the airport for us. It was about a 40 minute drive to the hotel. We had no idea of the day's schedule, so we guessed and got up at 6:30. We managed to get a call through to our guide at 8 AM. We had breakfast, jumped on the bus and were on our way by 9 AM. Our main guide for the trip went by the name of David.
We started with a visit to the Ming Dynasty Yuyuan Garden, cosidered one of the 4 greatest Chinese gardens. We also spent time in the shopping district Nanjing Road just outside the garden walls. Apparently when the nobles lost the garden to the people, the people used it as a centre point and the shopping area grew up around it. A beautiful garden, which looked similar to what I saw when watching Netflix's show Marco Polo. There were a large number of beautiful shops in the area.
We stopped back at the hotel for a couple hours rest in the afternoon, but we did not sleep. We thought it was better to tough it out and wait to get a good night's sleep. That way we could force ourselves onto a regular schedule.
Late in the afternoon we visited the Bund - a walkway/park along the river in Shanghai, across the river from the many tall offices in the main business district. Unfortunately the typhoon arrived and we were pretty much rained out. We managed to get a few pictures of the area before the rain chased us indoors. The day was one of the country's main national holidays so many people were still out with their umbrellas.
There was a river cruise that we did not sign up for when we booked (extra dollars of course), but we were happy to spend the 45 minutes sitting in a warm dry bus before returning to our hotel with a bunch of wet, soggy people.
This was a rainy day as a typhoon was coming up the coast and hit Shanghai that night. Not really windy but a lot of rain.
Our hotel was the Wyndham Bund East Shanghai, 25 ningguo Road, Yangpu district, Shanghai
