Trip Day 9 - Around Shanghai

Jan 3

We slept in, so skipped breakfast in the hotel and set off to explore central Shanghai. We took the subway as there was a station right next to our hotel.

We walked along some of the pedestrian part of Nanjing Road, then had lunch in a fancy Beijing duck restaurant. I took the boys for a ride on a little shuttle train/bus along the length of the pedestrian section. This struck me as no different to a thousand other shopping strips in a thousand other cities.

John went back to the hotel to catch up on business while I took the kids to Renmin (peoples) park hoping to find some open space for them to run. The park was very formal with no open lawn, but there was a large playground area where they worked off some excess energy for a couple of hours. We had a ride on some bumper cars then went looking for lollies for the kids.

We found an electronic games /amusement parlour on the top floor of a shopping centre, and checked out some of the games.

We were just heading back to the subway to catch the train back to our hotel when John's nephew Keith rang. We had been trying to contact them for a few days, but both mobile calls and SMS are patchy in china, especially to/from international numbers.

We took the subway to the station nearest to their hotel then walked 10 minutes. The Shanghai subway is pretty easy to navigate.

We chatted for a couple of hours then headed back to the hotel, had a quick dinner, then off to bed.