China: Metro Line 2

 

Saturday, March 30 10:00pm

Today was an awesome day. Actually, it began last night after my blog post. I got over the shock that I was in and decided to go walk around my area a bit, with the comfort that I knew where I was now. I walked around for a hour or so, taking in life in this part of Shanghai. There are lots of small shops and street food around and a little market that purchased water for $0.23 a bottle!! I also purchased chocolate filled cupcakes, or so I thought. It turns out, that after talking with Megan that its not chocolate filled but instead red-bean mush filled!! I will still try them, but imagine the disappointment if I had bit in thinking delicious chocolate would be filling my mouth!!

Today started by meeting Megan at 7:15am at The Camel Sports Bar in the French Concession area to watch some of the NCAA basketball tournament. It was pretty cool that in the midst of everything Chinese, there was this Americanized bar. 

After the first round of games, we ventured off down the French Concession area in search of the metro. We found Line 1 and then changed to Line 2 at People's Square. This terminal reminded of Grand Central with all that was going on. Once on Line 2, we traveled to Lujiazui where we saw the beautiful Pearl Tower, the Apple Store, Shanghai World Financial Center building (the bottle opener), Jin Mao building, and walked through two beautiful parks. Interesting fact, the Jin Mao building was the tallest in Shanghai until the Japanese built the SWFC building next door. Well, the Chinese couldn't live with a Japanese building holding their record so they're in the process of building a building next door to SWFC to regain the top honor.

The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel was the next adventure. In this tunnel, ,you ride a mini-tram under the Huangpu River. This wasn't an ordinary ride. This 5 minute ride took you through psychedelic lights and was interestingly narrated, which accompanying music. It was very Disney-futuristic and was interesting, to say the least. :-)

This ride let us off where we could walk the Bund waterfront area and see the entire skyline. We took this to East Nanjing Road, which is similar to Times Square Area, with lots of shops and people. It is also the location of another Apple Store.

We caught a cab and took it to the Yu-Yuan area where streets were lined with "traditional" architecture and the lovely red lanterns. Yu-Yuan means garden and silly me thought garden meant flowers. Nope. Garden in this area was rock gardens. This area was beautiful!!

After all of the walking, we took a cab to a restaurant that Megan knew of that had delicious dumplings. Xiao Long Bao, little dragon dumplings, hit the spot!! This gave us the energy to continue on. :-)

Back to Line 2 we went and then got off a few stops later to see the Jingan Temple. It was a magnificent temple in the middle of all of the skyscrapers. Fascinating. 

Back to Line 2 we went to stop at my hostel. We found my hostel easily, this time!! After showing Megan around we decided to stop in at one of the massage places on my street to get a foot massage. I think you can gather where this story goes... Needless to say we declined to enter all three places near me and decided to book another place instead up the road. You guessed it, back to Line 2.

After relaxing for an hour at my hostel, Megan and I grabbed a cab to take us to our 'legitimate' foot massage.  After our previous encounters, we were still skeptical but it turns out everything was on the up and up. For $30, we got an hour and half foot massage, pineapple buns, pork buns, and sugarcane and water chestnut juice!! It was THE BEST massage I've ever received. 

On the back to Line 2, we stopped to grab a bite for dinner. We found this place called "Leisure Restaurant." It was a rotating sushi bar. We ordered 4 rolls and they were fantastical!! The last roll had kiwi, pear, strawberry, crab, and something else that I couldn't recognize. I was shocked that all of the flavored worked so well together. 

It's now 10:00pm and I've made it back to the hostel and had a great conversation with Ray. Talking with him gave a terrific ending to a great day. 

Good night! 

**I just plugged my UpBand into my phone and realized that I walked 10.53 miles today!! The crazy thing is we could have walked a whole lot more!!