Shanghai Revisited...

So, we had a little girls day in Shanghai yesterday. And I have to say that this time I saw an entirely different side of the city. I still hold to the fact that the touristy areas of Shanghai are a nightmare... But, there are also some really nice things. Like hanging baskets and beautiful landscaping in the Pudong area. Or the old parts of Shanghai like the French and Italian sections that still include beautiful old buildings. And the tons of parks that are in the midst of all this. (Apparently, the mayor of Shanghai about 15 years ago made a rule that there must be grass every 300 meters.)

We did much less walking this time and spent most of the day shopping for name-brand knock-offs :-) and browsing through IKEA. (Can you believe an IKEA in China? I've never even been to the IKEA in the states!)

Besides that, we had tons of fun with just the girls, and we definitely laughed a lot! How could we not? We got on the wrong subway... twice. We got kicked out of a shop at the market b/c of our indecisiveness. We nearly missed the train back to Hangzhou... even running the whole way! And after arriving back in the Hangzhou train station, we raced thousands of Chinese people to the taxi line so that we wouldn't have to wait 45 minutes like last time!

I'm not quite ready to say I actually love Shanghai, but I'm not detesting it anymore either.