We had a brilliant day in Shanghai today – it’s a really interesting place and our tour was just the right mix of being shown the sites and having time to explore a little on our own. We docked at a container dock about an hour’s drive from central Shanghai (Diamond Princess is too big to dock closer in) and got on our bus. Our first call was at the riverside promenade on the Pudong side of the river. This gave us a great view of The Bund – the European style buildings on the other side of the river. Shanghai is an interesting city as it was one of the ports opened to the west in the opium wars and as a result has had much more western influence than the rest of China. It’s also a very new city. The ‘old’ buildings on The Bund were only built in the 1920’s & 30’s so are not much older than our house at home. The city’s full of amazing architecture. The Central Business District on the Pudong side of the river was farmland until about 20 years ago when they started developing it. Now it has the most amazing skyscrapers in all directions. All the buildings look different – none of this straight up and down rectangular skyscrapers here, so there’s always an interesting shape to catch your eye. Two of the buildings are the 3rd & 4th (or 4th & 5th) tallest buildings in the world & they’re building on that’s due to be the 2nd tallest in the world.
After our walk along the promenade we walked to the Historical Museum which is in the base of the Pearl TV Tower. It told the history of Shanghai though lifesize waxwork displays. They were very well done, but I must admit we’d have preferred to go up to the viewing platform on the top of the TV tower.
Then it was lunchtime. We went to a 5 star hotel where we were served a huge banquet with many many dishes and courses all being put in the centre of the table on a lazy susan & shared around. We had a couple who live in Hong Kong who knew what all the dishes are which was helpful. We tried Dim Sum which was nice. All of the dishes were very fresh and tasty & it was interesting to get to try so many flavours. Our guide Shirley told us the Shanghai cuisine is sweeter than the Cantonese style we would normally find in takeaways at home, but we found it less sweet which was good.
Our next stop was at the Jade Budda Temple. It was a very small temple down a side street with several different rooms and lots of different statues. I felt very sorry for the buddists who had come to worship as they were surrounded by tourists talking away and taking photos. The main jade budda statue was beautiful. It’s made of white jade & is an amazing lustre.
Our final stop was at the major tourist spot of Yu Gardens. It was a private garden that was built by someone fairly high up in power to honour his parents. It’s beautiful and has the potential to be very peaceful when not filled with crowds of tourists. There were lots of different courtyards, gardens and buildings so there was plenty to see. The koi carp in the ponds were amazing – huge and very keen on being fed.
We then had a bit of spare time to look around the bazaar next to the gardens. It was certainly an experience – very busy and crowded with lots of people trying to sell us ‘rolex’ watches, ‘mont blanc’ pens and skate wheels for shoes. We had a look at some lovely silk clothes but decided they were still well above our price range. It was interesting getting a chance to wonder around and experience all the sites and smells.
All in all we really enjoyed our day in Shanghai.
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