Tag 80: Shanghai, in the land of the rising sun

Paris of the East. Gateway to the world. Pearl of the Orient. Dragon head metropolis.

We arrive at 7:00 in the morning and have just over two days for the 24 million inhabitant metropolis. We show our destination to our taxi driver in Chinese on our phone. This preparation measure was definitely worth it (Smart Shanghai App). Hopefully we will manage here without knowledge of Chinese.

We start our exploration tour on foot at our wonderful hotel directly on the shopping street Ninjing Road East, which leads to the Bund. Here we took today's cover photo. The three largest on the picture: the TV tower Oriental Pear, the bottle opener Shanghai World Finance Center and finally the Shanghai Tower (China's tallest building with 632m).

We read that Shanghai is very western compared to other Chinese cities. The first evidence of this is immediately apparent to us: McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, 7 eleven.

Our path leads along the waterfront of the Bund, to the old town, the bazaar and the Yu Garden. Beautiful, but very crowded. With our bright heads we stand out in the crowd and every time the streets get a bit narrower (which is of course not uncommon), I don't need long to spot my Blondie.

We need some time to process all these new impressions.