China Day Three, Part I - Shanghai, Nanjing Road

Sunday, April 6th, 2008





Our first official day in Shanghai started off foggy. We headed down to the lower levels of the hotel to grab some breakfast - and to buy a map of Shanghai...





(Breakfast was good, but the fancy desserts looked better)





We ran into Maxine and Rachael in the lobby (Maxine is the owner and president of our company and Rachael is the manager of our Imports Department - she's also Maxine's daughter) and decided to split a cab to Shanghai's famed NANJING ROAD...



The cab dropped us off somewhere down the street from Nanjing Road (we thought and hoped), in front of this popular shopping mall called RAFFLES CITY:



(a funky mural outside of the mall)



(the scene across the street from Raffles City):









Me and Missy ducked into the mall, just so we could get our bearings...and to escape the beggars that had latched on to us. They were drawn to Missy's fair skin like moths to a flame. We saw a huge crowd of people as we entered the mall, and the sound of two squeaky voices over a PA system. Turns out that there was a radio show broadcasting live in the main entrance of Raffles City. We worked our way up to the next floor so we could look down on the stage:



Missy consulted her "research" - a list of shops she wanted to visit while in Shanghai. Amazingly, almost all the shops just happened to be in Raffles City! So we ended up spending a couple of hours window shopping and "shopping shopping" there...



At some point, we make our way down to the food court in the basement of the mall:



We saw this chinese version of the PAPA JOHN'S PIZZA sign, and were perplexed by the exclamation mark...we thought that something must've got lost/added in the translation:



We finally made our way back outside in search of Nanjing Road...along the way we saw this old european-style church nestled between the blocks of high-rise buildings:



We saw this really cool sculpture in front of this hotel...it looked like it was made up of a bunch of giant ball bearings. A hotel security guard shooed us away when we tried to get closer to it:





Nanjing Road is a pedestrian-only road...so the moment we saw that bicycles were not permitted past a certain point, we knew that we must be getting close:





Most of the hustle and bustle seemed to be going in a particular direction, so we went with the flow and followed it:









NANJING ROAD! We found it! The first thing we noticed were these cute little train-like tram cars zipping up and down the pedestrian mall...and then we noticed the view:







Missy and I decided to duck into this place called MR. GELATO to catch our breath...and to partake in some refreshing treats before exploring Nanjing Road in earnest...