SHANGHAI 2017 -THIRD VISIT

24 hours crew rest in Shanghai
Third visit

Smog

I'm very excited to be in Shanghai again but its too short of a stay to see it all.

Incredible amount of smog. You can really see the smog even more on the video.
Hope this will still give you a good idea of SHANGHAI



                                                                             

                                                                      SHANGHAI


BEFORE DÉPARTURE:
My mom had to pick me up to drive me to the airport. I couldn't  drove to the airport to go to work. The water pressure from the creek was too strong and split the road in half. I left with rubber boots on, leaving my dog behind in the house. Luckily my mom will go back and get the dog if she can jump over the hole. She is 82.
(something worst also happened but I wont tell you )


Let's go to China and change our minds.


FLIGHT:
Easier than the last time. I was not working the galley but the cabin so I had a chance to practice my mandarin with the passengers not obvious to speak mandarin with a French accent and passengers with their headsets on their ears but it did force me to talk louder just like them and be understood; I managed!

TIME TO BREAK:
This is the part I'm supposed to sleep and rest but it doesn't always work but at least we are far away from the bells that rings as loud as the firemen bell at the emergency 911 center but my bad personal event kept me awake...

HOTEL:
Here we are finally arrived at the hotel. Because of the time change now, I will have more night time than day time in Shanghai. Unfortunately for me but I will still enjoyed myself.
Strange to arrived during day time.

MY GOD !
What happened during 14 hours, I was up in the air?
China flipped up side down or what?
Return of communism 17-4 instead of 9-11?
Maximum security at the hotel.
X Ray machine, bomb detectors, police all over the hotel perimeters.
What happened in Shanghai?
Russians, koreans attacked China or what?
I'm speechless.
We even passed thru another door to get in the hotel.
They told us it's a government issue.
Yes, but can we have more details.
No, captain don't seem to care, the purser either, oh! Well.
We won't know anything about this police, soldiers, invasion at the hotel.

OK!
I'm going to unpack and rush to go out before it still day time and who cares! ( people always thing I made up stories anyway, no one will believe me, so...


MY FREE TIME:

Let's go!
I needed to get out of here fast, if I wanted to see a bit of this Nanjing street during day time.
I got out and boarded the elevator.
2 men got on and right away someone stopped the door from closing.
Holly shit! What the hell is this ?
1-2-3-4-5-6- 5 Or 6 soldiers with machine guns in hand boarded the elevators.

All I knew was that someone was pointing his machine gun at my toes and we had better not moved. If someone was nervous here, it will be me the occidental who will be the target.
But who are those 2 men escorted by the chinese swat team here?
I had quite the chills here.
Woa!
I finally got out the elevator like a star surrounded by security. It looks good actually!

OUF!
Would I had the courage to continue on for my city tour?

The security was all over the hotel still.


-WO YAO SHU NANJING ROAD, I said to the doorman to get me a cab.


Oh! no! Today for the first time . I'm stuck in traffic.

What's fantastic here is the taxi rides are really cheap but watch out the taxi drivers think they are  Ayrton Senna in the super extremely dangerous curves they stopped in the tunnel to finally decide to turn left or right woa!
However this being said they need to go electric and that is not just here but all over the planet city taxis as well as buses should be electric.


RIDE in a  TAXI;
We don't see fuck all !

ok. He stopped abruptly.
I guess I arrived at my destination.
Yes I'm here. Let"s make this even 30 rmb= 6 bucks
Let<s have fun as long as I can go back to my hotel; right!

Here again, police vans are every where.

Looks like beef jerky

                             mmm! not sure about these little food on a stick dip in hot water.

           

                                              Here  I was trying to cross the street.

The show on that street is full in color here. It"s amazing. It's full of people, The noise of the horns mandarin lanuae, bicyles, speakers of the stores, that keep repeating the same things over and over again without me understanding a thing, well it finally gets on my nerve after a 14 hours flight of bell ringing it's quite agressive. At home I leave like a monk. No noise. No one, beside my dog and my cat and the birds outside. This is something. I do love it, tho!

policemen are every where in the street watching, whislting and making sure everyone stays on the side walk.

So I decided to hide for a while and visit this famous prestigious hotel
PEACE HOTEL
where in 1920 people will dare to venture all the way to China and stayed for a while. There is an old jazz band that still play to this day. Its the oldest jazz band in the world.The oldest player is 96. When I stopped by, they were not playing and at their age, I'm sure it will be a long break, so, before they found me sleeping at the sound of saxophones because I'm so tired I decided not to stay and move on too bad.



                                                                   

I needed to keep going and to keep myself awake I decided to have a look at the roof top bar. Woa! It's amazing, the view is spectacular, great spot to hang out!

                                                               photo shoot was going on here.

Too bad the breeze was a bit cold so I decided to go down near the water 

amazing the board walk is full of flowers. 

China is making an effort to be green.

Too tired, I decided to go back to the hotel and tried to catch a taxi with the million of others that are on the board walk here trying to do the same thing.
Hum!

I managed to tell the driver where I wanted to go. Next to the hotel, there is this popular spot for fast food dumplings.

Oh! My god ! What a big mistake!

Highly recommanded by Lonely Planet

Yang's dumpling fast food in Pudong;
Brrr!

2 sur 10
1 for  seven up
1 for nibbling the crust

Sad indeed, I nibble again the crust in my room but the gooey inside was discusting.

When I came back to the hotel, I found out that the forecast was not good for my tomorrow visit.
What a bummer, they really have rain on the forecast, so, therefore, I won't be going to the floating village of Qilbao

Security check was still in place at the hotel.

Up! In my room, I went too bed too early unfortunately for me.
aoutch! The air conditioning was too noisy, I should have change room, the rain was falling on something and it sounded like someone was eating something in my room. Conclusion, I was up at  3: 30 Ah! shit ! Impossible to go back to sleep, 2 hours later. I decided to use the atomic bomb to put me down.

9 o'clock in the morning.
Here, I am,  all good to go but too late, to do anything, really, so, my option is to get used to ride the metro.  Discovering and getting used to it. Good! I will eat on the way there.

THE NEXT DAY:
My metro departure failed to succeed. I took the wrong direction. I wanted to go check the place that all the flight attendants talked about for great bargain Science and technology museum area but destiny brings me back to this Nanjing road where I wanted to go back anyway to go explore the small streets around that area.
Perfect!
I managed to get there by metro.
It's great. There aren't too many people.


Drug store full of miraculous food ...

Grocery of the taste of the day: Chinese cuisine.
I found my little cookies there with sesame seeds and peanuts cookies.

                             
Its not quite the kind of eggs I wanted to eat for breakfast this morning. In fact, I wanted to eat this chinese omelette with a crispy crepe inside.

                            Medicinal roots at the drug store. At the beginning I tought they were spiders.
         

                                             I went shopping bargain for a while it was fun.
                                             Tough Chinese vendors but at the end I won.

                                After my nice ride it was time to go back to the hotel by metro.

When I got back I was really hungry. Brunch was close Lunch was not ready so I when downstair to this fancy restaurant and order a soup.

It arrived cold
but I was really starving here but after a while I told myself wait a minute its a $20.00 bowl of soup here so return to sender and demand a hot soup.

Oh my ! I could hear the chef screaming his heads off  the brother of Chef Ramsay. I otught is was going to come out with a long knife and chop me in pieces. I cover my face with my two hands an regretted my decision.

cold soup
1 on 10
hot soup
8 on 10
$20.00
ask to warmed it up

WARNING:
This being said, passengers who went on organized tours all complained they ate cold meal all the time. I believe them because they were saying the airplane food was excellent!
See you next time for another visit in Shanghai!


saturday night : 21,786 steps-13.78 km
sunday morning: 4,602 steps