L woke up the earliest at 4am, but the rest of us were up by 6. So we had an interesting breakfast in the hotel. Mostly local food with a few mini pancakes and croissants in there to feed the kids.
We decided to just get out and explore so we took the subway to the People’s Park.
We came across a small kids amusement park, so of course we had to try the roller coaster. The sad thing was we didn’t realize, it was super expensive so this was our only ride.
We walked through more of the garden and I came across this super clean and brilliant public bathroom.
We came across the most beautiful topiary fountain. We were lucky enough to time it with their water show. The city of Shanghai does a beautiful job placing topiaries around the city.
We shopped in an underground mall for a bit before making our way over to the Oriental Pearl TV Tower. This thing was neat but it cost $70 just for one person to go up in it! Obviously we decided against this.
We walked around the intersection and then headed toward the Bund, the river walkway. We got sucked into the tourist trap, that was the sightseeing tram. Sounded like a great way to have a neat view of the city. It turned out, to be inside a tunnel that went underground.
We needed food at this point. Something quick was best. So we found a little soup and dumpling place, pointed to things on the menu, and hoped for the best.
We walked around the People’s Square and tried to do some shopping. We were at a difficult crossroads in the day. We were jet lagged, and tired, however if we went back to the hotel we’d throw off our evening schedule. So we sucked it up and decided to just keep on plugging away. This way we could stay out till 4 and head back to the hotel for an early dinner and bedtime. International travel struggles…
We took the subway over to the Shanghai Natural History Museum. One thing we noticed about the subways was that people were very respectful of my mom or myself with the kids. The majority of the time someone would stand up and offer us a seat. It was very impressive! That and the fact that it was so clean.
Exhaustion fully hit by this point. So we rushed through the last two floors of the museum. There was so much to see, we could have easily spent an entire day here.
We took the subway back to our hotel. The kids were starving and we scrambled to find some food for them before we got back to the hotel and they would pass out. So we went to a convenience store just out of our subway stop. We got them chicken skewers, and yogurt. Dinner of champions! 🙂
Just outside the store was this guy with a portable furnace. It had all kinds of drawers built into the front of it. Mom figured out that he was selling hot roasted sweet potatoes. Seemed so at odds to see something so rural and such a throw back in lifestyle in such a big modern city. We saw these guys a few more times throughout our stay and they always had customers.
We got the kids in bed and they passed out within moments. The hotel we were at had an executive lounge just one floor up from us. So we took turns going up and having a meager dinner of salad, white rice, and some bland cookies. The free wine was their redeeming quality!
I think we were all asleep before 9pm, it had been a very fun but long day.
