Day 8: The City On The Sea

Nothin like a Starbucks breaky to start the day off right! Then it was a two hour bus ride to Shanghai, or City on the Sea as the Chinese Characters suggest. Shanghai is truly a modern, big city. The central business district is called Pudong and is only 20 years old. We started our time in Shanghai with a walking tour. We walked from our hotel down Nanjing Donglu, one of Chinas most famous shopping streets (our hotel was conveniently located off this wonderful street), to The Bund (great view of Pudong and the Jinmao Tower), around Yuyuan Gardens (touristy market area), down Shanghai Old Street and around Dongtai Lu Antique Market. It was a scorching hot day and after our 2 hour tour our group split up for our own relaxing sight seeing and shopping an. And what would cool us down better then Starbucks?? Twice in one day for me....sick I know!

Dinner was a great Japanese style hot pot. Hot pot or nabe as its called in Japanese, is just as the name suggests. The food is cooked at the table in a hot pot of broth (like soup with everything in it) and people just pick out what they want and dip it into their own flavours in front of them. We made the mistake of thinking that our opinion of spicy was the same as a Chinese persons, we were wrong! Yummy food though and I really like this style of cooking!

After Dinner we booted it (literally we were almost running to make it in time) back to The Bund where we boarded a ferry type boat for a night cruise along the waterfront. We got to see all the lights of Shanghai and a great view of Jinmao Tower. Seriously weird shaped tower though. Good times!