View from the Bund

It's not every day that you can whisk your fiancée off to Shanghai for the weekend to celebrate her 30th birthday. However on Saturday that is exactly what I did. After hearing horror stories about Beijing domestic flights being sat on the tarmac for hours on end, I was a little bit worried but we left bang on time and were at our hotel by around 10:30 on Saturday morning. We went over to the Bund which is the old colonial era waterfront along the river with good views over to the newer business district of Shanghai. That is where this photo was taken.

We then got the "Tourist Sightseeing Tunnel" under the river which was basically just a very slow metro line with neon lights and effects. A spot of shopping and lunch was followed by a night out in the French Concession. We ended up in a nightclub on the Bund which was an experience in itself; massively over priced drinks with very snobby bankeresque clientèle ordering Veuve Clicquot by the magnum. The view over the river was quite impressive though with the distant skyscrapers drifting in and out of vision through the smog and mist.

We both loved Shanghai. It was a much easier city to get around. More people speak English there, the taxi drivers didn't seem to want to rip us off as much and it was much more compact and well organised. It is more westernised which has it's pros and cons. The best thing was possibly the fact it was t-shirt weather. It is so cold in Beijing now that I have to wear a woolly hat to ride to the station!