Shanghai - China

Yesterday was a sunny sea day and since I'm not crazy about the sun, I attended an informational lecture about Shanghai. HELP, so much panic was spread there, for example: 'Google Maps wouldn't work, ATMs wouldn't accept our credit cards, no one would speak English, you could only pay with Alipay, and so on and so forth.' After the event, I was totally unsettled and even wanted to book the TUI shuttle. I'll skip ahead, this morning I activated Alipay and except for some apps, my e-SIM worked flawlessly. Even Google Maps worked everywhere in Shanghai. To my great surprise, there was an ATM at the harbor terminal that accepted our credit cards and there were students at the information desk who spoke excellent German. So, all the panic could have been spared.

We first took a taxi to the Shanghai Tower. The city is huge. We were sitting in the back and again and again, one of us would say, look at 'THAT skyscraper' and 'this one'. This went on for almost the entire time. The taxi driver felt a strong need to communicate with me using an online translator on his phone. He didn’t pay any attention to traffic and I thought we were going to crash into another car. At some point, it got to be too much for me and I stopped responding. He then stopped writing as well. I'm sure he dropped us off in front of the Shanghai Tower.

Luckily, I had already purchased tickets in Germany beforehand, as the queue at the ticket counter was quite long.

This way, we could go straight up to the top in the elevator without a long wait. The view was gigantic and we could see very far in the great weather. After two rounds and many photos, we went up one more deck and enjoyed delicious iced drinks there. One drink was beautifully decorated.

After that, we took the elevator down again and Google Maps navigated us to the ferry terminal. While navigating, we turned around many times because you had to look up at the different skyscrapers again and again. Upon arriving at the ferry terminal, I asked about the ticket price. We paid 0.50 cents for the ferry and the ride to the other side was great. You had fantastic views of both sides of Shanghai. It's a shame that the ride was over so quickly.

The ferry also stopped right at our next sightseeing spot. Namely at The Bund, a very famous waterfront promenade. We didn't walk the entire length as the sun was quite strong. After taking dozens of photos, we walked to Nanjing Road using Google Maps. This is a very lively shopping street and the department stores outdo each other with their outside decorations. Almost every building has a gigantic figure hanging on the facade. There were so many people around. At some point, I wanted to eat something, and we went into a restaurant. The food was delicious and when I wanted to go to the bathroom afterward, the waitress showed me the way. We went through the store, up the stairs, to the right, to the left, out through the back door into a narrow small side street. There, some women were sitting on small stools peeling vegetables. I called out to the waitress 'Toilet' and she just nodded. Eventually, she stopped in front of a house and said toilet. I looked at her in bewilderment and told her to please stay with me, as I definitely wouldn’t find my way back. She then also went to the bathroom and safely brought me back. THANK YOU!

After eating, we spent quite a while on the shopping street and eventually decided we had enough.

I went to a taxi stand and without any problems, a taxi safely drove us back to the ship in the late afternoon. Again, there were no communication problems at all.

I don’t think I can upload photos. They will, of course, be uploaded as soon as I have better reception.

Now follow two days at sea :-(...., until we reach Hong Kong on Tuesday.

I send warm regards