It is really a stretch to figure out what day it is.
A few more comments about this amazing room:
To get to our room we walk down a long twisty hall way that is very wide. The walls are lined with interesting photos showing the history of the hotel.
US Grant stayed here shortly after he was president.
Charlie Chaplin stayed here twice and there are lots of pictures of him. Western movies were shown first in this hotel and Shanghai really loved western movies. I mean from the west not cowboy movies.
Our bathroom is quite nice and must have been recently redone.
It must take an hour just to dust this room and there is no dust anywhere.
Our walls are completely paneled and some of the panels are elaborately carved but nothing can hold a candle to the carving on the furniture.
There are lots of almost useless hidden drawers but I am having a great time finding them.
More tomorrow.
We met Ming at 8:00 for breakfast just after a short walk. She is my translator and is a professor here at the university. She is visually impaired and we had some good conversations about living here and being visually impaired.
We next went to Yew Garden and what an amazing place. Before you get in there are blocks and blocks of shops and stalls selling everything there is to sell. We don’t have to worry about it being made in China.
The garden was actually once part of someone’s home. I will never be able to do this place justice. It went on and on forever or maybe it was just the twisting and turning that made it feel that way. We visited several lovely gift shops where crafts were being explained. I could touch things in most places. There were endless special places to stop and just think or dream. You could even feel peaceful with all the crowds around you. I just could not imagine how special it would be to be there alone. I want to have this in my yard.
Next we had lunch in a place that specialized in local dumplings that are small and filled with steaming liquid. I called them squirting food. You puncture them with a chop stick before eating them but they still squirt. Needless to say we are having laundry done.
We took a taxied back to our hotel and took a two hour nap. I think we were still catching up on sleep.
After our nap we headed out for a walk to Nanjing road where there is a lot of shopping and places to eat. We walked along the Bund and saw the lit buildings. I don’t think I can explain this because there is nothing like it. It must all be done with LED lighting and computers but all I can say is wow. I think there is a little of this in Time Square but imagine dozens of buildings covered with lights making the buildings look like something they are not or showing ad after ad. Again lots of photo shoots going on.
We were not very hungry. We decided to go to a mall that looked interesting. Each floor had a theme; there was an entire floor of shoe stores.
I have seen a lot of malls in a lot of places and usually I hate all of them. I think that since it was nine at night on a Sunday this mall might have been a bit quieter than usual. We almost felt like we had it to ourselves. Neal did a great job of showing me interesting things. Did you know that there are three kinds of Le Crueset coffee cups? I did not know there were any at all.
This mall had about 7 floors and a spiral escalator. While riding it I had no idea it was even making turns.
The high point of this mall, especially for me, was the fifteen minutes I spend in the massage chair that took me off to another world.
Once I could pull together my melted self we headed back to our hotel.
We had a lovely simple dinner and a drink in the bar. Our server was a real sweet heart. We found out that the rather scary building next to our hotel is the Russian Counselet.
We went back to our lovely room and a great night sleep.