A word of advice if you take the train from Beijing to Shanghai: if you have a little one, or you have a lot of luggage, or both, buy an extra bed or two. The train ride actually wasn’t that bad at all, but it could have been a bit nicer if we had had more room. If there was a car or room for extra luggage, we didn’t find it, so we eventually crammed it into our sleeping quarters. Since the train from Shanghai to Guangzhou that we’ll take on Monday will be twice as long, we went ahead and booked an entire room for ourselves.
The Astor House Hotel, or Pujiang Hotel as it’s known locally, has mixed reviews but so far we’ve found it charming. The location is incredible. We’re a block away from the Bund and the view of Pudong across the river is… well, I fell in love with Shanghai right then and there.
We spent most of the day here today recovering from the train ride. But we couldn’t spend our entire first day in the Pearl of the Orient holed up inside, so we ventured out for dinner. Taxis can be hard to come by around dinner time and the misty rain doesn’t help either, so we walked into the Bund until we could find a car. The walk was worth it. The architecture and lights transport you to another place—not quite Europe, but not quite China either.
From there we finally took a taxi to the French Consession in search of a Mexican restaurant we dug up in our travel guide. The Lonely Planet China Guide has come in very handy on a number of occasions. That said, it’s not always very accurate. The prices are out of date (even if you do successfully haggle ) and the reviews of hotels and restaurants are often much too generous. In this case, the Mexican restaurant Badlands turned out to be a run of the mill bar that wasn’t even serving food tonight. So we walked a few blocks and came across an absolutely excellent Japanese place. Dinner came with a complementary photo shoot as the staff whipped out camera phones to get a shot of our little blond haired blue eyed beauty.
We’ll only be in Shanghai for the weekend, but I’m very glad we stopped here. It’ll give us something to compare with Hong Kong as we try to decide where to settle.
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