May 30, 2013 Shanghai – Shopping

May 30, 2013

Shanghai – Shopping

Today was a free day for us as we had no tours scheduled. Dorothy slept in but I got up at my usual time of 5 AM and did some work on my computer. The WFi connection at our hotel was available in our room and best of all it was fast and free. The closer we were to Shanghai the internet connections were excellent. In the hotel we were in Beijing the free access to WFi was only available in the lobby of the hotel. So this morning, I got caught up on my blog writing, my emails, NASA news and Canadian news.

After a leisurely breakfast which was a break for us as we have had to meet our guides early, we decided to go to a big shopping place in Shanghai. Of course getting to the shopping area could be another adventure especially for a person who does not known any Chinese. Well, in our hotel they have a system for dummies who do not know Chinese to easily get around Shanghai. All one has do is to ask the Front Desk where you want to go and they have a pre-printed card that they have various places marked on it. The Front Desk just ticks off the place you need to go to and all one has to do is to hand it to the taxi driver. In addition on the card is how much a person has to pay for the trip. On the way back, all we had to do is show the card to the taxi driver to bring us back to the hotel.

The shopping area we were told to go to was at a subway station and 3 of the large department stores were connected to the subway station by an underground mall. It was raining and this underground mall was a blessing as we were able go from one store to another without going outside. Two of the stores called, Pacific Department Store and Orient Shopping Center were a little older so were just multilevel stores. The third one called The Grand Gateway was a new store built with an open center with stores around the open center. There were 6 levels and the whole area was finished in a cream colour. It was just a beautiful store. Dorothy found the prices in this store were quite high. This was probably needed to cover the high rent in the store.

We decided to have lunch in one of the many restaurants on the 6^th floor of this new shopping area. Most of the time our guides have always ordered our Chinese meals but this time we were on our own so we thought after over 2 weeks here we should be able to handle the simple task of ordering a Chinese meal. It should have been easy but we were not in a Chinese restaurant but a Thilandese Restaurant. We ordered 2 dished from a picture menu by pointing and surprisingly it turned out to be a great lunch.

After lunch we were shopped out and got a taxi to our hotel by pointing out the hotel’s name on the card that the hotel gave us. After this experience we know now how to find our way easily around Shanghai.

Tomorrow we will be catching the high speed train form Shanghai to Beijing. We will be staying at the same hotel in Beijing we stayed at before that has poor WFi connection in the lobby area. So I am not sure if I will be able to send updates on our travels before we catch our plane back to Detroit on Monday afternoon.

The pictures below are at The Grand Gateway store that has recently been opened.