China, day 7 (July 5, 2006)
… I swear, I am going to finish these. The "Current Location" is the location the journal is about, not where I actually am (home). All of the pictures are up: Trip to China 2006 gallery (thanks to Jon for the gallery space).
It was raining when we got up. Our luck with the weather had finally run out. We decided to have breakfast at the hotel, so we would not have to walk anywhere in the rain. The hotel had a pretty good buffet, but not as good as the one at the Crowne Plaza in Beijing. Although, the food may not have been as good, the view was much better. The buffet was on the same level as the lobby: on the 38th floor.
We decided an inside activity would be best, so we asked for directions to the Shanghai Museum and borrowed two umbrellas. Everyone was out with umbrellas, of course, although I had never seen anyone bike with an umbrella before. Some of the bikers just had raincoats. One thing I did notice was that the umbrellas were all different colors. In New York, it seems like 90% of the population owns a black umbrella.
We made our way to the museum. My father took a lot of photos. We got the audio guide in English, so we had some idea of what the pieces were. As usual, all the writing was in both English and Chinese. We spent a few hours looking at pieces of acient art before we decided that we had had enough.
By the time we left, the rain had stopped. We met up with Johnson and started walking on Nanjing Lu toward The Bund, where one can see across the Huangpu River into Pudong, right where the tallest skyscrapers are. On our way there, we got distracted by a B?? Coffee (chain; I forget the name). They had this fancy contraption for making the coffee, unfortunately it did not work properly:
We sat for a while and chatted. Eventually, we did get to The Bund, but it was still quite foggy and overcast. We had originally planned on going up in one of the towers, but the weather was not nice enough to make the trip worth it.
We walked around for a bit before heading off to dinner. We met a few more of my father's business associates, one of whom, Phillip, took this photo:
The restaurant was Harbin style. Harbin is a city in nothern China where Phillip grew up, so he ordered for us. The food was very good, and I had corn juice for the first time. It tasted like, well, corn. There was plenty more than we could eat. My father thought we had ordered enough for ten people, and he was probably right. The bill? 401 yuan. That's US$50.30. (Cool, Google calculator finally does currency conversions… They added that like a year ago, and I never noticed, right?)
After dinner, we all headed over to Xintiandi, which is an area of Shanghai made to look old-fashioned. We wondered around for a little while before sitting down at a pub. Everyone else drank and chatting for while. There was a live band playing American songs.
Eventually, we headed back to the hotel and to sleep.
One more day left. To be continued…