20 September 2009
We rose late this morning as Scotty believed that we were leaving for Huangshan today. We had breakfast and packed lazily. We confused the front desk man when we said we wanted to check out. Luckily he knew enough English to inform us we were booked until tomorrow. After confirming the date on our train ticket, we realized we had another day to enjoy Shanghai.
After dropping our stuff back into the room, we headed for the shopping complex next to the main train station. The main floor was a supermarket with a massage parlor downstairs and a huge camera section upstairs. Scotty's lens had broken and so he was in search of a new one. After attempting to bargain down the price of a replacement lens, the cheapest over 3000Y, one shop said they would fix it for 400Y. While waiting for them to repair the lens, we walked around and Scotty attempted to find a cheap fish eye lens. He bargained them down to roughly US price but ended up not buying. The camera guys didn't seem to be as eager to sell as the other vendors unfortunately.
After a failed attempt to find Nanxiang Steamed Bun Restaurant near the train station, we ate a a Wu Da Nang and had our dumplings (9 Yuan). We then headed to People's Square and Nanjing Road via subway. I love Shanghai's subway system. Very safe and cheap! I wish it went to more places though. Of course the city is expanding their subway system and adding tons of new lines in the future. Additionally, the construction everywhere is a bit maddening. However, the city looks like it will be quite spectacular by the World Expo in 2010. We are definitely here at least a year and a half too early to enjoy the new and improved Shanghai!!
We enjoyed refreshing boba milk tea for only 4Y (less than $1 US!) This was the first time we had found cold ones, which were great after walking around in the heat and humidity. We then toured the Shanghai Planning Exhibition. It consisted of pictures of historic buildings on the second floor followed by the crazy plans they had for the world expo next year. They had all these models of the city that seemed to grow in size as we moved from floor to floor. The last model was huge and took up half the floor. We also watched a planetorium style 3D video rendering of Shanghai post-2010.
After the exhibition it was time for more boba tea and some strange goopy bread-like fried ball (3 Yuan) things that I liked but Scotty didn't. For dinner we headed back to Yang's Fry Dumpling place for a 11Y dinner consisting of more dumplings and a 7Up (I was very excited as I had learned how to say soda - "qishuir" - and was understood by the cashier when I said it!) Scotty got another body massage in preparation for the climb on Tuesday while I headed back to the Zhao An.
-Julia