Meeting old Friends in Hot Shanghai

Posted On July 1, 2013

We arrived in Shanghai after comfortable eight hour train ride. The train was very new and up to 200 km/h fast and so it was quite a relaxing ride (minus one uncle shouting into his mobile phone for half the ride). The Phoenix Hostel which we mainly chose because of its central location was our home for the next few days.

The next day was one of these super hot Shanghai summer days and the thermometer reached 37 degrees and we felt like we were walking in an oven. As both of us had visited Shanghai before we decided to take it easy and so we spent the first day with some nice food and a walk to the Bund. The impressive skyline there is always fascinating and a good example of China’s progress.

In the evening we met Ruby, her husband Kelvin and her cousin for dinner. Kevin knew Ruby all the way back from his study days in Hong Kong and it was indeed very nice to meet them again (after Ruby and Kelvin had been in Switzerland for holidays a few years ago). After a nice Chinese dinner they invited us to the Hyatt Bar on the 91st floor of the Jin Mao Building. It was really “Drinks with a View” – just fantastic. Thanks again to them for being such nice hosts.

On our last day in Shanghai we escaped the heat and visited the superb Shanghai Museum which has a very good collection of Chinese artifacts and we especially liked the pottery section.

Later on we decided to see if IKEA in China was that different to the one in Europe (it was not) and to investigate if the tales about sleeping people in the IKEA showroom is true (it was not when we went). We also used the opportunity to eat some Swedish Meatballs for dinner.

Afterwards we concluded our Shanghai stay with a nightly walk along the Bund which offered some scenic photo spots (yes, we were photo taking tourists after all).

It was nice to revisit Shanghai and we were fascinated again by the speed of change – it seems like half of the country changes if you revisit China after just a couple of years.