Day 7 – Tour of Shanghai

This day was a very long, but exciting day. We visited many of the main sites in Shanghai. We started the morning by walking along the Bund. This is where we could take iconic photos of Shanghai. This area is extremely popular with the tourists, but it is much more busier at night. It was nice to see the city during the day and the Bund was relatively quiet.

As a side note, there were vendors there selling drinks. In general, most sodas are sold at room temperature. If you want a cold soda, you must request it and you may actually pay a bit more if they are even available. The day was pretty chilly so even at room temperature they were ok. I had a delicious watermelon flavored Mirinda (a fruity drink similar to Fanta that is popular in Mexico).

After the Bund, we went shopping near the Yu (or Yuyuan) Garden. We were given some time to explore on our own before lunch. Inside this shopping center is the famous garden. We were not given enough time to visit the garden, but we could spend some time exploring the shopping area. There were all kinds of stores you could imagine. There are also several of the original pork soup dumpling restaurants as well. One of the areas had several craftsmen and women showing off their work as they made new creations. This was very enjoyable and I did purchase a couple of small things from these artists. We had lunch at a tea room right outside of the shopping center. This was probably one of my favorite places that we visited. In fact, we came back to this shopping center on day 8 on our own.

After a delicious lunch, we went to the water city of Zhujiajiao. This town is over an hour bus ride from where we were in Shanghai. At the bus terminal, there were plenty of western style toilets available. First, we stopped in at one of the houses that has been turned into a museum. It was beautiful! The garden was amazing and I would love to see it when the plants are more lively. Then we took a boat ride down the river similar to the gondola rides in Venice. When we docked, we were able to wander along the river back to the bus and look at the variety of stores and food available. I tried one of the sticky rice dumplings (Zongzi) that are popular for the Dragon Boat Festival. There were many things available that I did not recognize, so it was very interesting to look around at all the stores and food vendors. We wandered back to the bus and headed back into Shanghai.

We went to the other side of the Bund and got on a river boat. The boat went up and down the Huangpu river by the famous Shanghai skyline. We were able to upgrade to a special seating area for about $5. This got us access to a special seating area on the top outside area of the boat along with a snack (a handful of cookies) and a drink (either a juice or a beer). It was worth it for the amazing view and the chance to sit down! There were other seats inside the boat (which were much warmer), but the view was often obstructed and the glass would cause issues if you were trying to take pictures. The special seating area was not crowded so we were able to get amazing pictures of the Shanghai skyline!

After the river cruise, our bus dropped us off at the hotel. Most of our group were leaving the next day. My son and I chose to eat a simple meal at the hotel restaurant and go to be early. We had walked 6.64 miles this day! As we were saying our goodbyes, we had found that one of our travel companions had also booked the Toy Story Hotel for a couple of days (just like we had) so we made plans to meet up the next day and get a taxi to our next hotel together. The travel agent handled shuttles to the airport the next day, but since we did not take advantage of this service I cannot tell much about it. It seemed that they had several different drop-off times. At this point, the hotel helped us with holding our luggage while we did some last-minute sight seeing and helped us find a taxi.

Introduction to VIPKid Field Trip (November 2019)