ALSO: If you look to the right underneath the picture, the address of the hotel I am staying at for about a month is there
Alright so let me begin about my Sunday adventures. A group of us set out to explore downtown Shanghai. What we thought would be a decent 4-5 hour journey turned into quite a long 10 hour excursion.
The goal was to visit a place called People Square and another place called the Bund. We started at noon and headed down to the subway. This took us to a little outside of main downtown. (Shanghai is huge, a picture further on down will show this) When we got back to the surface, new and interesting sites were to be made. What we thought was going to be a quick walk to People's Square soon turned into getting lost, getting more lost, and finally still being lost. BUT, being lost when you don't have an agenda is such a great thing. Below shows some pictures of some old housing where the Old Chinese city can still be seen.
This man's cart was packed with a ton of random items. He also had two kids that were hidden among his merchandise.
While we were lost, we were able to come across a pretty interesting street market. Items included simple things like fruit, vegetables, and rice. Also things like eels, cats, live chickens, fish, turtles, pork, and really anything else you can think of were being chopped up and served fresh to whoever wanted to buy them. The smell was unbelievable but was definitely worth experience. I did take a few pictures of this market, but for some reason I cannot find the pictures I took. Below shows the market from a distance.
After visiting the market, we got back on track and made it to People's Square. For some reference, People's Square can be compared to Time's Square, just a lot of people, cars, and stores. Here we walked around and just stared at all of the huge stores and buildings. We stopped in a park where we took this picture.
We were able to get an older lady to take this picture for us. It turned out quite well other than the fact that Carlin can't take a picture worth his life haha. After walking around the park for a little bit, we decided to go into this Urban Development Museum. This place was packed with information about the Bund, history of Shanghai's buildings, and it also housed a scale model of the entire city shown here.
This is the scale model which took up an entire floor of the museum. The size of this city is just ridiculous.
After the museum, we went and found the Bund. It is a pretty neat place and probably the best place to see the skyline lit up at night. You can look over the river and just see all of the major skyscrapers in downtown. I have been to New York City, but this site seemed to dwarf it with ease. I keep being amazed about the stark difference within the same culture here in Shanghai. The older buildings that were in some of my earlier pictures were literally right on the other side of the road to more western and modern buildings. The lifestyle seems to skip centuries as you cross the street.
When we arrived at the Bund, we were able to finally sit and rest a little as we waited for the lights to turn on. Although the lights didn't turn on all at once like I was expecting, the view was still one that I will never forget.
When we were taking pictures here, a group of Koreans just randomly walked up and wanted to take pictures with all of us. Strangely as we got people to take our pictures, more and more random people just kept hopping in and taking their pictures with us. FINALLY, Corbin Blair is becoming a famous person haha.
From here, we took a ferry across the water so that we could eat dinner. A little scary part was when we were crossing the little crossing bridge, the ferry may or may not have come into quickly and clipped it. There was a loud boom and the bridge felt like it bounced up and down which made me scream like a little girl. Seriously gave me a little scare there haha. We traveled across the river and took some more pictures. The new picture on the top right was taken from the ferry. We arrived on the other side and made it to yet another mall to eat dinner. For some reason I was the only person who did not get my food, and because I didn't know how to talk to my waiter, I did not know what to do to ask where my food was. For some reason we found out that the order wasn't placed so for the sake of the group, my order was cancelled, and I got a quick bite from McDonalds!! Sadly, it did not taste like the burgers from home =/ but it still filled me up.
Lastly and finally!! I feel like I have been writing for quite sometime. We made it to the Bottle Opener Building (I am not sure really what the building is called but this is really its nickname. It gets it because it looks like a bottle opener)
This is where the highest bar in the world is located. It is open to the public and there is no cover charge at all. We got in the elevator and went to the 93rd floor where the bar was. Of course I had to get something while we were up there just to say I drank in the tallest bar in the world. I got one beer that cost me around 65 Yuan which is around $10. Totally worth it though for this experience. Below is a pretty nice picture taken from this floor of some of the other skyscrapers.
The day was finally over, and we made it safely home. I really was not expecting to be out for about 10 hours, but in all honesty it was such an amazing experience. My feet still are pretty sore, but they will get used to it haha.
Every time I start typing, there is a million and one things I want to make sure I write but never end up being able to. It has only been 5 days and feels like a few weeks. I cannot wait for what the rest of this experience has to bring and know that God has my back =]
Hope all is well for everyone,
Corbin Blair
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