Shanghai noon and night

Friday night we tried to get organized for our big trip to the city.  We sat down for at least an hour going through our travel book finding places that we wanted to see, and walking tours that would fill out our day.  We scheduled when we'd be leaving and worked it all out to make it to a concert later that night.

We were woken up a lot earlier then planned - even though it was supposed to be Vincent's weekend off - they were still buzzing at the door for him to go in, but they said he could have the day off, what a relief.  After some Golden (french) toast for breakfast, we packed up our bags and set off.  We went to what we thought was the bus terminal - and the language barrier was an instant struggle. So we left the building hoping to find the real terminal.  We did, just around the corner and paid the 9 RMB and went off to find the correct gate.  Finding it difficult yet again to ask for help to direct us to the right bus in a line of about 30 buses a man, who spoke very poor english finally directed us to the correct one.  Hoping that was the hardest part, we settled in our seats and waited to depart.  

As the bus rolled into the city, we weren't exactly sure where to get off so we waited for the majority of the people to vacate and we would simply follow along, and thats what we did.  This didn't seem to help much, since we didn't know which part of the giant city we were in.  We found a Starbucks and thought it would be best to regroup with our map there.  Being across from the Four Season's Hotel helped, we found where we were on the map, and decided it would be a good time to call our friend's uncle to meet with him.  It turns out the mall he was at was only a short taxi ride away.  The 12 story mall was larger then anything I had seen before.  But we made our way to the very top floor to the restaurant and met David and his family for a meal.  They were great people with a lot of energy, which was somewhat unexpected for him being 84.  After our meal they walked us to the main floor and pointed us in the direction to the "pedestrian walk way".  He said it would take us directly to the "bund", our first designated "walking tour".  As we were walking we noticed a lot of people surrounding a building looking up.  As we got closer we realized the police had roped off the base of the building because there was a man sitting on the ledge throwing paper over the top.  This building was close to 25 stories high.

Its a little hard to see both his feet and the papers on the ledge because the photo is so small (click on it to enlarge)

Bystanders watching the man on top of the roof. We are still uncertain what his motives were.

The amount of people on the walk way was crazy, yet a good indicator of how many people actually live in this city.  At times I would have to hold on to Vincent's backpack so we wouldn't get separated.

Fire and rescue heading towards the man on the building.

Sometimes I'm uncertain of what I was taking photos of.  I was a little trigger happy, and excited to be out of JiaDing - so I photographed everything I could.

The architecture here is amazing.  None of the buildings looked similar.

This would be beautiful at night with all the lights flashing.

There were lots of people selling silly toys on the sidewalks, trying to get us to buy them.

The Oriental Pearl Tower, one of Shanghai's many tourist attractions.

Us being tourists.  While we were admiring the view, some strangers asked if they could have their pictures taken with us.  Odd, yet entertaining.

More interesting architecture.. I think the one that (Vincent thought looked like a giant bottle opener) is the World tower, but I'm not 100% sure.

All of these attractions were on "the Bund", and probably have a lot of historical significance.  However, we didn't really stop to read about any of it.  

Again with just being excited to take photos.  Planting trees along the ledge at the bund

Kind of looks like some sort of city hall.

Yet another wedding, I couldn't help myself.

This little guy is everywhere.  He is the mascot for the 2010 Shanghai exposition. 

As we left the bund on our way to old town, the path we took had many shops, but they were all closed.

I enjoy taking photographs of random elderly people - their faces seem to have a lot of character and tell a story.

I'm not sure what they roast on these - but they smell very delicious. 

The sun was setting while we were still lost in old town, it brought out a lot more life to the buildings already historical shapes.

After finding our way back to a park, we sat down to regroup our game plan and eat some food.  We hadn't seen half as much as we had intended for a variety of reasons.  Mostly being the fact that road signs are hard to find, and the language barrier when asking for directions.  So we decided we would make our way to the other end of town close to the concert hall and get some food.  We made it safely to the proper subway stop, but blindly led each other around town looking for a restaurant to eat some dinner.  We finally located a Mcdonald's and relaxed for a short time.  It was getting close to 9pm and the venue doors would be opening soon, so we made our way back in attempts to have some live entertainment.  Vincent wrote all the information down, which should have made it easy to find right? Not so much, the address that the website gave brought us to a gate, which was closed.  Not what you would expect when going to a concert.  So we walked around the street a little bit more hoping to find someone who looked like they could help us, but it was not successful.  Finally we found a cab and headed home after a very, very long day on our feet.