Day 1 in Shanghai, wandering around

We woke up shortly before arriving in Shanghai on Friday morning. Took the subway quite easily to the Captain's Hostel but were there too early to check in. We dropped our stuff off and explored the surrounding area. We found a nice place to have breakfast where they had "waffles." They tasted a bit different but were still good. It was considered a dessert, but I was fine eating it for breakfast. We walked along the Bund (a touristy area we were staying a block away from) and then checked in. Considering it cost us $7 a night, it was pretty nice, I actually slept better my two nights in the hostel than I have in Beijing. The hostel rooms were called sailor bunks and there were eight beds to a room.

After checking in we decided to just wander the streets and see what we could discover. We spent most of the day walking along Nanjing Donglu and the French Concession. Nanjing Donglu is a main walking street that lights up at night (unfortunately we did not get to see it all lit up) and is very popular during the weekends. Nanjing Donglu leads you into People's Square where we saw a Communist gathering of sorts. We took a break near a sculpture for a bit and saw an old Chinese man painting. His easel was attached to his bicycle somehow and he was painting the sculpture. As we were leaving we looked at his painting and noticed that we were in it! We were both pretty psyched that we were memorialized in this old Chinese man's painting.

We were right near the Radisson Hotel and decided to use their bathrooms since they would probably be the nicest we could find for a bit, this became a trend for the weekend. Using bathrooms in nice hotels. I recommend it, it beats the alternative. After checking out the facilities we decided to see if we could go to the top of the building and check out the revolving restaurant. We went up during a slow time so a waiter took us around the restaurant and showed us a menu as I took photos of the city. Had we gone up one of the other towers with a view, we would have had to pay, and here we got to see it for free and look at fancy menus.

We continued on to find the French Concession and some good French food. While walking down the streets there were loads of people running up to us trying to get us to buy handbags, it was getting really frustrating and annoying after a while. After being completely exhausted we found a cute French place where I had a Nutella Crepe, yum! It was refreshing and I totally did not feel like I was in China anymore. Right outside the restaurant was a market with all kinds of booths. We decided to check it out and immediately were attacked by all kinds of people trying to sell their goods. I bought the cutest tiniest little tripod I have seen which is great for traveling and surprisingly it holds the weight of my camera. Alex bought a monstrous pair of sunglasses and managed to talk the woman down to a super low price. While walking down one of the strips, a man came up to Alex trying to get her to buy a handbag and she said, "I don't like handbags." One would normally think the guy would leave us alone but instead he wanted to know why and kept following us. For some odd reason I burst out into a laughing fit and he decided to follow me instead and kept asking if I was crazy. Eventually we lost him and got out of the insanity.

On our way back to the hostel we went to a tea house that looked really cool because it had swings as chairs at some of the tables. We really really wanted one but unfortunately they only had two tables with swings and both were taken. We ate there anyway and the waitress was very odd. We asked for water and she told us that we had to order. We kept trying to tell her that we would order but that we wanted water first and she did not seem to grasp the concept. Since we were in the area and it was getting late we decided to check out some of the local bars since Shanghai is supposed to be a "happening" town. We went to one that seemed ok until some weird guy tried to talk to us. We were by no means dressed to impress as we had just been walking all day, so I am not sure why he even came over. He was obviously drunk and made some statement like, "We guys come here to get girls and you girls come here to get guys." Alex and I looked at each other like, um ... not quite. Eventually some teeny tiny Asian girls (they were definitely not Chinese) started dancing all skanky like and luckily the guy's attention shifted. Alex's friends were in the area, so we moved onto another place and stayed there until we went back to the hostel.