Shanghai

Shanghai is colorful, big, loud, rich and poor, new and old, and above all impressive. We arrived in the evening and took the metro from the airport to our hostel on Nanjing Road. It turned out to be a very good choice. Clean and centrally located within walking distance of People Square and around the corner from a major shopping street. Exhausted from the day, we fell into bed at midnight right after dinner.

To get an overview of the city, we started our first day in Shanghai with a hop-on-hop-off bus tour. For less than five euros, we could ride all day on two different bus lines, learn about the city through headphones, and get off at many different stops.

Shanghai is divided by the Huangpu River into two parts. If you look at the map from above, we stayed on the left side of the river, I think this district is called Puxi. Pudong, the finance and trade zone of the city, is located on the right side of the river. The waterfront on the Puxi side, where you have a great view of the Pudong skyline, is called The Bund.

Bus line 1 stayed on the Puxi side, while bus line 2 went to Pudong. We took the time to explore everything and went to the Radisson Blue Hotel, where we enjoyed a great view of the city from the rotating observation platform. After a late lunch, we got off at Yu Yuan Garden. Yu Yuan Garden is a small part of the city consisting of traditional Chinese houses, with a small lake between them that you can cross via a bridge. However, it is very touristy. There are many shops and food stands, and it was quite crowded. But it was definitely worth it.

Chinese people like to go to clubs when there are Europeans, so it is very easy to get into clubs for free and to get free drinks in Shanghai. We went out twice in the evening and had a lot of fun.

We spent Friday at a very large underground market. Located in a metro station, there are small shops offering fake shoes, bags, clothes, electronics, and everything else you can imagine, and people negotiate like crazy. I didn't buy anything except a manicure, but my friends found some good bargains.

In the evening, we treated ourselves to a cocktail on the 87th floor of the Hyatt Hotel in Pudong and had a breathtaking view of the illuminated city. A magician performed some tricks at our table, making our evening even better because he was really skilled with his cards and other things.

There are about 24 million people living in Shanghai, but after 11:00 p.m., it is no longer possible to use public transportation, and taxis do not use their meters anymore and instead negotiate prices. Unlike in Dalian, we often took longer to find a taxi here that was willing to take us and also at a price that was okay for us.

On Saturday, Giulia and I went on a shopping tour and shopped as much as our wallets could handle. For lunch, we had the most delicious sushi salad ever at a small restaurant that we found by chance while getting lost. Then we had a plate of pancakes with various toppings at Mr. Pancake, and after that, we were full and happy to go out with the others in the evening.

We spent Sunday afternoon in Shanghai's artist district. Small houses are lined up here, and it is similar to Yu Yuan Garden, very touristy with many small shops.

However, you could now feel that the Golden Week had started because there were so many people around the Bund that the police had deployed officers on the sidewalks, traffic lights, and streets to ensure that everything was running smoothly and that people were only walking in one direction. At one traffic light, we had to wait twice before we could cross the street.

In the evening, one of my Shanghai highlights was Bar Rouge. A bar on the Bund with a great view of the skyline. It was definitely a great choice for our last evening here, and we all agree that this city is simply amazing and that we would love to come back.