I apologize now: y’all are going to be so sick of my vacation photos by the time I’m done. I really went bonkers with the camera this time and everyone else had a camera too so… lots and lots and lots of photos.
Day 1
The driving in Shanghai is terrifying. Road lane markers are merely “guidelines” and no one really pays attention to what I consider basic rules of the road. It is total chaos on the streets. On the plus side, because it is such chaos, people tend to be far more aware when driving, so there are rarely any accidents.
I found it neat that most of the stoplights in Shanghai have counters on them to tell u how much longer the red or green light has left.
Our first stop was the Shanghai City God Temple. Marcus’ uncle, who was showing us around, took me go pray to some deity with children. I’m not sure if I was praying for fertility or for future healthy kids or what, but I got the hint. =P
Starbucks is everywhere.
Next up was Yuyuan which was really pretty.
And how’s this for utter randomness? We ran into!
The theater in Yuyuan.
This is the ceiling of the theater.
The story about this weird doorway is that the Chinese word for vase (ping) is a homonym for peace (ping an), so people create vase shaped doors to invite in peace.
And they create funky shaped doors like this to trap evil spirits.
A 400 year old Gingko Biloba tree.
Another vase-shaped door!
Some random wall outside Yuyuan.
Walking through the lane of shops outside Yuyuan.
A dragon turtle.
We had dinner in the French Concession.
I have never been in a restaurant with so many vents in the ceiling. o_O
Day 2
I have no idea what that is… random sculpture? Huge ass sundial?
Our first stop of the day was the “fake market”. Fake as in “I can buy a ‘Prada’ bag for $15 if I don’t fail at bargaining.” I think the only thing we bought was a “North Face” hiking pack for Marcus. I honestly couldn’t tell you if it could pass as a real North Face product, but it looked really good!
We had brunch at a Brazilian place that was surprisingly, really good!
Then we went to Tianzifang.
Tianzifang is an artsy, bohemian-themed section of the city. It’s really quaint and reminds me of Europe in some sections.
This shop was pretty much a steampunk shop. And it had the skull of an alien in it (as in Ripley aliens) which was really cool.
Lunch time!
Bamboo seemed to be the material of choice for all the construction scaffolding.
Artists carving on stone in front of a shop.
We stopped in a building with a series of art galleries and found this guy there. He totally knew who was boss: he made all the tourists go around him as they came through. =D
And a really weird building decoration. It looks cool up close but from far away, it looks like something is eating the building. =D
