With the weather being a bit cloudy today (still warm though) we had an easy touristy day. After brekkie we drove over to Zhujiajiao, the famous water city west of Shanghai city. Hans, our lovely guide (btw: Thanks again, Hans, for being such a great guide and for correcting the flaw on yesterday’s blog), gave us a nice tour (unfortunately – due to Sunday – a lot of other guides did the same with their groups, which were a lot larger than the 2 of us). Anyway, it was definitely worth the trip, we had a great time walking through this ancient city (1700+ years old) – with maybe the one obstacle of the smell of cooking tofu all over the place.

We started at Fangsheng Bridge which in translation means “Release Animate Being”. This very much based on rebirth believe, with an interesting touch when carried out today:

You can buy a turtle to release it into the river 10 meters away – where it will be caught again for your next purchase….an everlasting circle not aiming at rebirth but at constant revenue for the dealer 😉

Despite the cloudy weather, the following pictures should give you an idea of how beautiful this place is – you might want to mentally remove the crowds:

In addition to the canals you can also see some interesting art & architecture pieces (first pic shows a bowl made of one single piece of jade):

…as well as the often reclaimed mix of ancient and modern (take a look at the shoes):

As all places we’ve seen so far, this one also is one for great food:

 

…oops – sorry – wrong picture…food now:

When we left this nice place (one more pic:)….

…we basically went into real touristy mode, i.e. we drove back to the hotel for a short relax time, then went over to the part of the French Concession we did not see yesterday to just walk around and enjoy some teas (Oolong tea first, then hop tea). Funny enough – we really did not know – we ran into the Shanghai Fashion Week:

As everywhere on this planet, large groups of young kids try to get a view of their fav VIP – especially here at the VIP entrance (no, we did not stay).

It’s a really nice neighbourhood, as explained by Hans very European, very price but we also had a good dinner and found a really nice brewery with a very nice wheat beer. 

We’re now back at the hotel, one more night in Shanghai, then we’ll take the fast train to Yichang where we will board our ship for a few day cruise on the Yangtze.

Stay tuned for updates

/Chris