Part of the reason we made the big move to Hong Kong was to explore/travel around Asia. We started off visiting Singapore and Malaysia and had an amazing time. Now, we decided that a trip to mainland China was in order. Since we don't have unlimited vacation (boo), it would have to be a quick trip. We flew out on Friday evening after work and returned home on Sunday. It actually was the perfect amount of time. While you could easily spend weeks in any city exploring, we felt we were able to hit the highlights during our weekend.
We arrived on Friday and checked into our hotel, which was very nice. The best part of the hotel was definitely the breakfast (which was included in the package). In addition to the standard Chinese fare of congee, tons of pork, and noodles, they had a huge spread of "Western breakfast" foods. We loaded up on pancakes, hash browns, toast, and cereal. Yum.....
Saturday morning we woke up and set off to explore Shanghai. It just so happens that we have a friend in Shanghai and we met up with her to take the grand tour. She has lived in Shanghai for most of her life and was very excited to show us around. We met her because she went to Cornell and is engaged to one of Daniel's coworkers in GS New York.
First up was the YuYuan Gardens. These beautiful Chinese gardens have a very long and interesting history. You can read about it here or google. :-) This area was packed with people. I later learned all of Shanghai is packed with people. 18 million people live there - holy cow! We loaded up on some nice stinky tofu and wandered through the bridge of nine turns. We then passed tons of markets and were followed around by merchants trying to sell us their goods. We found a few cute items and were on our way.
Our friend and fabulous tour guide Wendy. We are enjoying some stinkalicious tofu.
One of the most popular items sold at the markets were these customized stamps. You can have your name translated into Chinese characters and made into a stamp. We couldn't believe at the first stand we visited what names were used as an example. I mean, Kelly and Daniel aren't exactly the most popular names in China. Most people can't even pronounce Kelly.
After exploring the garden and nearby markets, we jetted off to People's Square. We saw some of the government buildings and lots of people. Yes, that's why they call it People Square!
In this area we decided to stop for lunch. We may or may not have had pizza. Hey, at least we tried the stinky tofu! :-)
Up next... the TV tower, gorgeous night view of Shanghai from the Bund, and dinner!
3 comments:
That's crazy about the stamps!
I'm in a little bit of denial about the stamps! That's ridiculous!
Is it realllly called, "stinky" tofu, or did you just call it that because it was smelly?
I know - I couldn't believe the stamps!! The tofu was called stinky tofu. I'm actually not sure why because it didn't smell. The name made me a little nervous to try it but it was just fried tofu.
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