Since we got the go-ahead from the doctor for Dom's hand, we decided to continue our adventure by hitting the next super-power….China. We decided to fly into Shanghai for a few days since it's the only major city in China that we hadn't visited yet. We also brought a friend, Guillaume (aka Guili (in french) / aka Geelee (in english)), who also quit his job and will be joining us for part of our adventure.
Also, Jen wants to thank everyone for all of the birthday wishes! And sorry in advance for any late responses.. it isn't possible to access Facebook from China so we won't be able to respond until we depart the country.
And, we'd also like to apologize if the photo galleries on our blog are a bit messed up for the next few posts.. it seems our website is also blocked, so we won't be able to fix / clean them up right away.
Anyways… back to Shanghai! Big cities are big cities, but here are some of the spots we visited and enjoyed. One of the first sites we visited is the one often identified with Shanghai: "The Bund" and its view of the Pearl Tower.
We also visited the old town which is architecturally quite lovely, but it has very much been turned in a giant tourist shopping trap
We decided to go up Shanghai's World Financial Centre which, besides looking like a giant USB key, has the second highest observation deck in the world: 474 meters above ground level. The best part about it was that when we arrived at the building, we discovered that it is FREE to go up to the observation deck on your birthday... and wouldn't you know it.. the day we went happened to be Jen's Birthday…..Yay!!
Of course, we couldn't miss the Shanghai lights at night…and its dancing ladies ;)
If you know Jen personally and talk about China, you will hear her say: "I hate chinese food". However, after this trip, we now found a dish that she could not get enough of… The Food Republic is a food court where you buy a gift card and then shop around for what you would like to eat. There, we found some soup dumplings that Guili and Jen liked SOO much, that we actually went for 4 out of 5 dinners… They were THAT good!!
Finally, if you go to Shanghai, you have to take the world fastest (magnetic levitation) commercial train which takes you from the airport to a hub on the metro. On our approximately 8 minute trip, we managed to reach 431km/h… (according to the LED sign in the train..).
