Return to Shanghai

We were overjoyed to be back in Shanghai. We knew Cielo could relax a little, since there are many fewer tourists in Shanghai. We felt like we knew the city and could just check in and lounge around a couple of days to de-stress before flying back to California.

We stayed at the Pudong Shangri-la hotel. Pudong means it's on the east side of the Huangpu river, and Pudong is a special economic zone where there's even more construction that in Puxi (the west side). Out our window we had a great view of Jin Mao tower, and a construction crane busily working on the other half of the not-yet-completed Shangri-la hotel.

We had a good time for part of our return visit to Shanghai. We had a couple of nice meals out, especially one at The Grill restaurant on the 56th floor of Jin Mao. We did some leisurely souvenir shopping.

However, we also had two very stressful days. One was when we had plans to meet friends for dinner all the way across town. The plan was overly complex, and we weren't prepared for cross-town rush hour traffic. The plan's elements were:

Problems that arose:

Despite the incredible horror of this evening, we survived somehow, and our friends turned out to be relieved that we weren't killed in a construction crane accident or something.

We also didn't let this day ruin the whole trip, although it seemed like it might at the time. In all, we had a great time in China, learned a lot of the language, and know Cielo will one day be mad at us that we didn't wait until she was a little older.