Reasons we couldn’t wait to get to Shanghai – Dave & Pilar Dieter, an amazing couple we had met 2 years earlier in New Zealand during their trip around the world, had relocated here (the website for their travels is: http://www.studiodwd.com/rtw/itinerary.html), it was the last stop before home, and doing some last minute shopping.

For the 5 days we spent in Shanghai, staying with Dave and Pilar was the highlight. It was a huge blessing to stay with people who could relate to our experiences, have stimulating conversations with, be introduced to some great street side food/amazing Shanghai restaurants/ and home grilled bbq, receive some education on the local culture, and get pointed in the right direction as to which city sights to visit. During the day when they were working Mike and I managed to visit some of the main attractions and had a great time walking all over Shanghai. Here is a list of the places we visited:

• The Bund & the Pudong: a stretch of land that was developed as a financial center along the Huangpu River in the early part of the century, the Bund remains well maintained and serves as a visual contrast to the modern development of skyrises in the Pudong on the opposite side of the river
• The antique market
• Shanghai Urban Planning Museum in Renmin Square. The Museum was a great exhibition covering the past and present facts as well as the future aspirations for developing this city as the host of the 2010 World’s Fair. We also had the luck to run into the cultural experience of Chinese parents spending their Saturday past time match-making their grown children. We had been told about this from Dave & Pilar, but it was even more interesting seeing a couple hundred parents milling around in the park with signs describing the physical & intellectual attributes of their grown children who were no where in sight
• An hour long $10 foot massage in an upscale parlor amongst the tree lined streets of the atmospheric French Concession
• More shopping – Sheila got her “designer” purse, Mike got his “designer” watch and jeans, I got my favorite DVDs at a very discounted price compared to the US
• On our way out of the country our last international thrill was to ride the Maglev train, the world’s fastest train at top speeds of 267 mph, to the airport

With a complex array of emotions we boarded the airplane at the Shanghai airport on Monday afternoon. We arrived in the L.A. airport after 11 hours on the plane Monday morning emotional to see Aunt Ruth’s familiar face and happy to be “home”. I could have hugged the customs officer I was so elated.

Since the overall presiding tone of our experiences with Chinese tourist attractions was a bit negative, I think it is only fair to balance it out with the numerous random positive experiences. Here is a list to name a few:

• The frequent, unelicited attempts by locals to speak their few words of English to help the 2 foreigners who obviously knew NO Mandarin (except hello & thank you)
• The delight of NOT using a menu to order at a small restaurant (because the menu was all in Chinese characters) and being invited into the kitchen to pick-out ingredients that then turned up on our table minutes later as the most AMAZING food
• Go to China and try hot pot – whole restaurant chains are dedicated to this delicacy which is similar to fondue (more info check out - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_pot)
• Spending less than $3 to play a whole hours worth of arcade games
• Local transit that is easy, efficient, and reasonably priced

April 17th - May 5th
China

April 17th - 21st
Being Coddled in Beijing

April 22ng - 30th
Tourism in China : Disneyfied & Pricy

April 30th – May 5th
Smiling In Shanghai