Sunday, 1st April - Shanghai

Last night we headed down the street for dinner. To our left was a long line of western restaurants, Italian, British, Irish, American, even a place called the funky chicken. No way were we having western food for our first dinner in China! We headed to the right, and came across a Chinese restaurant. They were making dumplings in the window. We headed in - no English menu, no English speakers, no pictures of the food ... Just the sort of adventure we were looking for. On my first visit to China a few years ago I would given it a miss, but I am a lot braver now. Besides, Graham has a translation app on his iPad and he'd just loaded it up with phrases for various dumplings back at the hotel.

Asking for pork dumplings caused consternation, but the word dumplings by itself resulted in heads being nodded and smiles all around. We asked for dumplings for two. It cost a grand total of 14 yuan for the two of us, which is a little over $2. Our dumplings arrived in a steamer and they were delicious. It was really only enough food for an appetizer. Instead of trying to work our way through the menu, we decided to go to another restaurant for our main course. 

We found another small restaurant across the road. It had pictures on the wall so we thought we'd give it a go. When we got inside we realised that we didn't recognise some of the food in the pictures. Graham saw some food on a bench and had a sticky beak to check that there was something we would eat, while I figured out that there was enough food on the plate that I did recognise to be willing to give it a go. We chose our dishes. I tried for pork again, but it wasn't available. We ordered, expecting to get tofu, rice, green vegetables, something black that looked like vegetables, chicken and a round white thing that looked like it could be gluggy porridge. Each meal cost 11 yuan, less than $2.

Our meals were dished up quickly onto a divided plate. We got an enormous mound of rice, that took up the large section of the plate. Cabbage filled another section and the black stuff was some sort of pickled cabbage. The tofu was on top of the white gluggy thing. To Graham's delight it was a fried egg. As I don't eat them, he had mine too. Our chicken was basically a small Maryland. Before it was served to us, one of the staff took a cleaver to it, cutting it into chopstick size pieces.

The cabbage was delicious, the pickled cabbage was tasty and the tofu was quite edible. I managed to resist eating too much rice. It was so tempting but I really must change the way that I eat. I managed the chicken quite well with my chopsticks.

As I'm describing it, I realise that I should have taken a photo of dinner. I'll try to think of it next time. We did go back and take photos of the restaurants from outside this morning.

Instead of going to the hotel buffet this morning we went back to the dumplings restaurant for breakfast. Then we headed off for a walk around the area. While I enjoyed the dumplings, it may have been better to go for the walk first as there was so much interesting street food. There were things that looked like they might be donuts, cooked on lots of oil. I would have loved to taste one to see if it was sweet or savoury. People were cooking up thin pancakes with some vegetable ingredients. There were buns and dumplings as well all within a block from where we'd eaten.

A few blocks later, I was really sorry we had eaten breakfast when we stumbled across a local market that had a myriad of food stalls. So many things that it would have been fun to taste. We will go back there when we get back to Shanghai. I think we would have been tempted to try some but we were both conscious that we were having a buffet lunch and didn't want to spoil it.

We made our way back towards the hotel. We could have kept walking but I suggested a break for a coffee before we headed off to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. I've learned that it is a good idea to (a) pace yourself when sight seeing and (b) take the opportunity when it arises to go to a nice clean western toilet when you can. Not that I've had time to have any bad experiences on this trip, but I'm expecting at least one.

We caught the metro to the TV tower. It was much more crowded this time, but we didn't have any luggage and managed really well. I think it helps that Graham is so tall and strong. I know it gives me confidence in a crowded situation.

The TV Tower was amazing. I am so glad we went. Just seeing it from ground level was awe inspiring. There was a great walkway over a roundabout to get across to it, which gave the opportunity for photos on the way. We were both looking forward to taking photos. The TV Tower is such a feature of the Shanghai skyline and is in so many of our photos from Shanghai, that we were keen to see what the rest of Shanghai looked like from the vantage point of the tower.

We got to the observation deck and I was enthralled. I love visiting the Telstra Tower in Canberra, so I knew I would enjoy this. The viewing platform is on the middle ball, at about 260m from the ground. Every direction we looked there were skyscrapers, river views, and buildings. I snapped away happily as did Graham, until we got back to our starting point and then we looked for the restaurant. We ended up getting lost and found ourselves on another sightseeing level. This one had the glass bottomed floor and floor to ceiling windows.

It was so exciting. I managed to summon up the courage to walk onto the glass and ended up getting some magnificent photos. I had tried to capture the roundabout walkway from the previous viewing platform but I was able to take a photo from directly over it. It was so cool. I could feel the expression of delight on my face as I beamed at Graham after taking the photo. It got a bit windy up there, and I've been feeling the cold, so we went in and looked for the restaurant again. We finally worked out how to get ourselves there.

The restaurant was just lovely, attractively furnished, attentively staffed, and with amazing views. There were people everywhere enjoying the buffet. We were seated, ordered drinks, collected our meals and settled back to enjoy the experience. The food was delicious. We managed to resist the temptation to eat until we burst. I think knowing that we would be back in a little over a week for dinner made that a bit easier.

I am not sure what part of lunch I enjoyed the most. I had a taste of some wonderful Thai curries, and enjoyed a mixture of European cuisines with tastes of beef, fish, chicken and pork dishes. There were options where they would cook the food you'd chosen, so perhaps I will try those when we go back for dinner. I didn't check out the dessert table either, so that's on the menu too.

After lunch we queued for the lift again. The journey takes just 40 seconds. Back on ground level we looked up and saw the sightseeing platform and the restaurant in the middle ball. It seemed so high!

From the tower we'd seen a boulevard along the river so we headed there to take some ground level photos. We had great fun snapping away. It was less crowded than the Bund, and the people selling photos and souvenirs weren't all over us, which made it a more pleasant experience. When we reached the end we had the option of going back to the metro or walking home. I voted for walking. It gave me the opportunity to take more photos along the way. I'm now the proud owner of a series of extremely ordinary photos of skyscrapers. :-)

We got back to the hotel and took the opportunity to rest, as we were going out with one of Graham's Chinese contacts for a drink that evening. Thank goodness for the Internet, as Jack's contact details were safely stored in Canberra. I did wonder how we would find a phone number for the right Jack Tsu in Shanghai, but we managed to track him down with some lateral thinking. Graham tried the number we found and it was the right Jack.

To my delight, he took us back to the Riverside, where we had seen a number of bars and restaurants earlier that afternoon. It was lovely to see the location at night time. I'd even commented on one establishment as wed walked along, saying that it must be beautiful lit up at night time. It was. We ended up at the Lavazza restaurant/bar. I have no idea of its Chinese name but I recognised the branding. :-) The thing that struck me as strange after being there for a couple of hours was that there was absolutely no smell of coffee there.

I love spending time with Graham's business contacts, as it is such an opportunity to learn about life in China. Because he wants to build a business relationship with Graham he was telling us about himself, so I heard when he came to Shanghai, what jobs he'd done over the years, about his wife and son, his home and his future plans. We met him in Sydney in February, and he also told us what he'd enjoyed about that trip. In return, he was learning about us. There was some talk of business, of course, but in a very relaxed way. Graham and he will progress those discussions at a later date.

On the way back to the hotel I realised that Jack was driving us through the roundabout I'd photographed from the tower. I wish I'd had my camera ready. Oh well, another time. It was great to see I from a different perspective.