"Sleepless in Shanghai"

Today was a glorious day of sunshine and 14 degrees - sorry Toronto :( .

We had a very relaxing day strolling through Shanghai, a vast and vibrant city, depicting "old" and "new" in both the people and the structures. Shanghai has a population of approx. 18 million, the largest and most dense in China.

We started off the morning with a great buffet breakfast in the hotel and then headed off to the Shanghai Museum. The Museum is a fantastic place to experience the beauty of ancient Chinese art through a collection of 120,000 artifacts. From sculptures to calligraphy to pottery to currencies and to paintings, the exhibit was a refreshing view into the past of our children's birthplace.

After our museum visit, we traversed through the streets - crowded, action-packed, and bursting with life like no other city we've witnessed. The character of the people is etched on their faces. We arrived at the Tai Sheng Yuan Restaurant for lunch with very sleepy kids in tow. Their early morning rise (2am to be exact!) posed some eating challenges for Jane and Steve, who discovered new ways to fetch and eat their food, with slumped bodies draped across their laps. The food was yummy :).

After lunch, we headed down to the Bund, Shanghai's famous waterfront situated on the Huangpu river, which divides Shanghai into 2 parts. From the Bund, you can witness the beauty of modern skyscrapers and buildings of varying architectural styles.



It was after 3pm when we completed our walk of the Bund, so we decided to call it a day and head back to our hotel for a swim in the pool. We will plan to do some further re-tooling of the girls' clocks in hopes that they can get the most out of a busy day tomorrow. Sweet dreams everyone - zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Hi there! Jane here. Everyone is sound asleep and I thought I'd add a couple of things from Friday. While the weather here is beautiful by our chilly North American standards, for the Chinese, it is still only "early" spring and winter coats are still the norm, thus our travel guide, Fontana, in one of the pics, is in a winter coat. The girls today went out with lightweight down vests, but bare arms, much to the dismay of many people. In the museum, we had a couple of people stop and point to the girls' arms, and some even touched them to see if they were warm enough. We had tried to convince our "very determined" daughters earlier in the day to cover up the arms, but without success. I had forgotten about our beloved "clothing police" here in China and all were good natured when we insisted (with Fontana's translation assistance) that they were in fact warm enough. Later on the Bund, Steve had someone come up to him and say something about summer. Not quite understanding what the person was saying, he just decided to greet him with "Nihao" (hello), and only later realized the gentleman was wondering if he thought it was summer out with his short-sleeved t-shirt. Fontana told us that many Chinese people think North Americans are crazy going out running in shorts when it's cold out - those crazy runners!!! Here's hoping for more t-shirt weather tomorrow!!