When 7 became 2

Tuesday morning…Me, Emma and Becca set of to the Oriental Pearl to see the sights of Shanghai. The weather was again grim but we didn’t want to leave without going up. The Oriental Pearl is a TV tower situated by the side of the Huangpu River opposite the Bund. The queues again were huge but we decided to do things the Chinese way and just pushed straight to the front of the queue. Waited all of 5 mins in probably a queue longer than 1 hours worth of people. We were getting strange looks off people but we couldn’t decide if it was the day-to-day stares we were getting or they were genuinely annoyed we were pushing in.

The view from the upper sphere was quite poor, and the view from the space cabin was even worse. However by the time we reached the glass-viewing floor the visibility had improved and we could actually see the ground and cars and buses on the roads. This was quite an experience. Very happy we went up and the pictures don’t really do it justice. On descent back to the ground we passed the games room where they had a mini roller coaster. So we thought it would be funny to go on…Becca however didn’t and actually cried as we got off, although it was mainly with laughter she was petrified of what was literally a kiddies ride…Hilar

In the afternoon we went to Yu gardens but because of the May holiday it was heaving so quickly escaped to an area called Xin Tian Di, this was on the west end of Huai Hai Lu, and was the first major revamp development in Shanghai. IT was home to many little restaurants and quaint shops. Our original bus home was at 8.40pm but half of the group was tired and wanted to get an early bus so we split up into two groups.  Becca and I stayed in Shanghai for a little adventure of our own.

We got in a taxi and were on our way to the Shanghai Art Museum when we spotted a long street market full of antiques so we hopped out. This was very similar to the other streets and markets as in we were pestered a lot. I had to run away from one man because I said see you later and he shouted “I will see you in my dreams tonight”. He’d been learning some crazy English phrases. PERV !!!!

After dinner we made our way back to the hotel grabbed our bags and headed over to the Bund to see the night-lights of the city. Very proud we managed by ourselves. And we even made it to the bus station with time to spare.

After a long bus journey home we finally arrived back in our dorm at 12am, I was supposed to be getting up at 5am to head of to Hangzhou but after the fiasco of waiting around to get picked up last week Kate and I decided to steal an extra hour in bed.