Travel tips for Shanghai

The first stop in our journey was Shanghai (click here to see our full itinerary). The week before our trip was very busy at work and I think it’s fair to say some rest was needed. So for us Shanghai meant: eat well, sleep a lot, try to get into the Chinese rhythm, fight the jetlag, swim, walk around a bit.

General impression
• prepared for a culture shock arriving in China, but it didn’t come
• Shanghai = New York. You can easily forget that you are in China when you just look at the buildings.
• Lots of smog
• Everything is written in Chinese and English, easy to get around

Hotel
• Anting Villa Hotel, in the French concession. Great area (“European”, lots of trees, doesn’t feel like the big city), great hotel. Quite expensive (but worth it).
• Donghu hotel – Donghu street. Cheaper than Anting Villa but still hotel standard. Biggest advantage is the 25m pool where we went to relax and work out. Also has a fitness. Don’t be surprised if the Chinese people don’t close the curtains in the shower room next to the swimming pool – shame doesn’t seem to exist

Restaurants
• Simply Thai, in the French concession
• Dolar Shop Hot Pot in Golden Eagle building – we met a colleague from dunnhumby China who ordered a lot of food for us. Hot pot is just a pot of cooking water with a sauce in which you put the food. It’s an interesting eating experience but it does take a long time (and a lot of effort) to get your food ready.
• Japanese all you can eat in our Donghu hotel grill your own meat. Really nice! For 150 yuan per person all you can eat & drink.
• Western food: People Square: McDonalds and Starbucks next to the Yu Garden in the Chinese neighbourhood
• Grape in the French concession: decent but basic Chinese food, nice Chinese wine
• Uncle Fast Food – UFF: Chinese fastfood. Spicy meat with rice and an egg pudding to mix through your rice. An acquired taste. You should try though - we went to the one in the Shanghai Hongqiao train station

Activities
• Tube to Pudong, the modern part of town. Particularly loved the bottle opener building.
• Visit Bookazine in the bottle opener building to buy English books
• Tube to the Bund for the great skyline and the old buildings
• Walk, walk, walk and discover the more popular parts of Shanghai, with streets where they only sell music instruments
• Visit a Tesco express
• Nanjing road – not really for us, too many people, only shops
• People Square with Shanghai museum. This was free when we went there and that was a good thing because we weren’t too impressed by the collection of money, bronze, furniture… The calligraphy and Ming vases were nice though. Lots and lots of Chinese tourists
• Chinese neighbourhood. We thought we’d see the real China, but that only lasted a few streets and then it was back to a very touristy area, with the Yu-garden
• Take the train in Shanghai Hongqiao train station – the waiting room is very impressive because of the enormousness of it