22.11.11

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

3 comments:

bali villas said...

Shanghai is one of the best place. There are surely lots of ways to enjoy and admire the wonderful place. I think you are very enjoyed in this tour.

Reto said...

Yes, Shanghai is a very convenient city to visit. And for us (we do not speak Chinese), it was very easy to get from one place to another, for example using the Shanghai Metro.

Catherine Tramell said...
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