Well we finally got off of the ship-only one hour late! All the people on the mariner tours are Americans-makes sense since the reason you get these free tours is because you paid for the cruise with your American Express card. Americans don't seem to chit chat on the bus as much as the British or Australians so it makes for a different sort of trip our guide was a young Chinese girl who spoke quite good English which was very nice because some of our guides have spoken with such a heavy accent that you can understand half of what they are saying.
She seemed very proud of her city. She explained that Beijing is the capital of China-like Washington but Shanghai is the financial capital-like New York. In the last 10 years they have built many skyscrapers-all very different and unusual. They had many different architects from all over the world and it is like they had a competition to see who could design the weirdest looking building. Hope you can see this in the photos-I know looking at a zillion pictures of just the building is a little boring!
We went first to the Shanghai financial center-at one time the tallest building in the world but now the third tallest-Kuala Lampur and Dubai have taken over this honor. We went right to the top where the floor had some clear glass squares where you could look down to the street. They had some big posters showing the various stages of the building. Dad and I felt this part of the tour was a bit long so we sneaked out and made our way down to the street we had a bit of a panic moment because we came out a different door and couldn't find a tour bus. Oh no! Now we are in big trouble and they are going to be really mad at us. We went to the information desk but of course they didn't speak English! The ship had provided us with some often asked questions written out in Mandarin but "where is the tour bus"wasn't one of them. I finally Jew a picture of a bus and they understood. Fortunately the bus pulled up at that moment. The rest of the tour showed up in about 10 min. and we didn't get into too much trouble for "cutting class".
Some interesting facts about living in Shanghai. They are really trying to limit the number of cars in Shanghai because it is such a big city-21 million people(another city is even bigger-31 million people! That's almost as many people as in all of Canada!). Anyway how they do this is you have to pay about $6000(US money) to buy your license plate before you can buy your car! This is a lot of money because this is about one year's salary.
The other interesting thing is you can on the land your house is on. The government owns all the land and rents it out for 99 years. Of course not very many people can afford to own a home. I read somewhere that it would be like an American family where both parents work and earn $60,000 a year trying to buy an $800,000 house.
Next we went to lunch-a supposedly famous place in old Shanghai(they had a picture of Hillary and Bill Clinton on the wall so maybe that is why it is famous). We sat at tables for 10 with a Lazy Susan in the middle and you helped yourself as the food went by. I didn't like a lot of the dishes but the dumplings were good. I think dad liked it better than I did but he didn't take any of the desert which looked and tasted like a white rubber!
After lunch we saw the Wu Gardens and then had time for shopping-thankfully we were allowed to do this on our own with strict instructions to meet up at the Starbucks at 3 PM. We bought some neat presents for all of you and dad bargained very successfully well I moved on and sussed out the next possible purchase.
The next thing on the agenda was the Shanghai Museum. We didn't have too much time here-you could spend a whole day here and still not see it properly. I don't think this bothered people too much as we were all "cultured out". When we were waiting in front of the building to meet up with everyone dad was approached by a woman selling gigantic red silk kites. Dad-I bargained with her and finally got a good price for the kite. I haven't decided whether to keep it for myself or give it to one of the grandchildren! It is about 15 feet long and is a bright red octopus. Very neat! Then she came back and tried to sell me a roll of string on a reel. I had just finished bargaining with her when a man yelled at her and I realized this was his turf. She left the real of string and ran away. Later I casually walked away and met up with her so I could pay her. Someone had told other people what I had done because when we got on the bus someone ran up selling kites and about six people bought them.
Back home(the ship) at about 6:30 PM and as dad would write in a public school essay on your summer vacation-we arrived home tired but happy.
I have spent all my usual exercise time writing this but who cares. I will diet what I get home! By the way, we need to buy another suitcase for all of our presents. We saw a nice leather one in the market but dad couldn't bargain her down to a low enough price so we will look for a cheaper one in Hong Kong.
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