China is Huge!!!, part 2

When travelling in Europe, you jump on a train and 2-3 hours later, you're in a different country.  That's not the case in most places in the US and Canada.  So being the huge country that China is, you jump on a bullet train travelling 300 km/h and and 5.5 hours later, you've made it to Shanghai from Beijing.

Shanghai - The Bund

As mentioned in a previous post, Shanghai felt a little more personable, so we liked it more than Beijing.  Though Shanghai doesn't have the big well known sites, there were still a couple of things worth checking out.

We jumped on one of those hop-on/hop-off buses and found ourselves at the Bund.  The Bund is a stretch of road along the Huangpu River that faces Pudong, the financial sector of Shanghai.  So we joined in with the large swarm of Chinese and enjoyed the view of the Pudong skyline.  

The tower in the skyline is the Oriental Pearl Tower.  My brother Jeorge tells me that the view from the tower is amazing.  But you can see from our own pictures that the view would have been obscured, so we didn't go up the tower.  So feel free to google Pudong and you'll see that the skyline would have been even more impressive.

Shanghai - Yuyuan Tourist Mart and Yuyuan Garden

We then jumped on the bus again and found ourselves at Yuyuan Tourist Mart.  This was an area of shops in old Chinese-style buildings.  Again, we fought through the crowds and admired buildings and popped our heads in at various little stores.

Darin popped his head into a tea store and bought these bulbs that when dropped in hot water, they will "bloom" into flowers.  Leave them in there long enough to brew yourself a pot of tea, which we were also able to do as we went into a traditional tea house.

Tucked away near the Yuyuan Tourist Mart is a traditional Chinese garden.  While it was still being visited by a lot of tourist, it was quite manageable and made for a very peaceful visit.