Our First Day in Shanghai

After a very long 13 hour flight from LAX to Shanghai, we've finally made it to China! Our plan of sleeping most of the flight to make the time pass by quicker was not so successful. Even after drinking a Dream Water (pictured below), I may have slept a total of 4 hours. And unfortunately, the one thing that usually consumes most of my time, wasn't available: the internet. But oh well, this is what traveling is all about. It's not as much about the destination as it is the journey.

Anyways, the good news is we made it to Shanghai a little early... and with a little sleep. Next step was to grab the Maglev (levitating high speed train) to the metro. We were glad we took the Maglev because it's somewhat of a marvel, and it got us to the connecting metro in record time. The speeds of this train reached over 300 Kilometers a hour which was pretty insane!

We finally made it to our hotel in the heart of Shanghai. I snapped a few pics on the way in which I'll post below. We plopped on our beds for a few and elevated our legs to reset our adrenals. And as you'll notice from the pics, yes somehow they booked our room with two twin beds instead of a queen 😐 But honestly, we're just glad to be laying down somewhere lol.

Next we decided to grab a quick breakfast at our hotel because we were pretty much starving and wanted to make a quick meal of it. A nap was on our minds, so no need in spending all morning finding the perfect breakfast spot. We would take whatever they would give us.... and we did!

Wondering what in the world that is? Your guess is as good as ours. But it was actually pretty good! I believe the white doughy thing was a roll made of some sort of rice flour. And you eat that alongside rice porridge and spicy, pickled ginger and garlic. There were also some sort of fried sweet breads (which reminded Kristen of Mexican churros), yogurt, and packaged buns and sweet french bread. So although it wasn't exactly the breakfast we had in mind, it worked out okay with our appetites.

Now it was time for a LONG overdue nap. We gave ourselves two hours to catch up on sleep before heading out into town to see the sights. We also have heard SO MUCH about the famous Shanghai fried dumplings (specifically Din Tai Fung's restaurant) so that will be our target dinner location.

Our first stop was Yuyuan Garden which sits in central Shanghai. We explored the markets and grabbed a snack before heading over to the Yuyuan Garden Tea House which serves traditional Chinese teas with quail eggs and tofu. We decided to pass on the eggs, but the tea was perfect.

Next we visited the Old City Wall at Dajing Road. This is the oldest part of Shanghai and dates back to 1554 during the Ming Dynasty. We grabbed a couple of pics here and moved on.

Then we took the metro over to the financial district which is full of sky scrapers and some very interesting architecture. One building in particular we wanted to see was the Oriental Pearl Tower. We were going to go up in it but the wait was two hours.. and by this time our jetlag was seriously setting in. Perhaps when we come back through Shanghai on our way home we'll try to go up in it again.

After that it was time for dinner. And we finally got to try those tasty dumplings everyone has told us about. I have to say, we weren't disappointed. And they totally made up for this morning's breakfast. Seriously though, you have to try these things when you come to Shanghai.

We really wanted to head back out tonight and see the skyline lit up at night as it's one of the most impressive skylines in all of China. But we just couldn't work up the energy. That'll also have to wait until we swing back through in a few weeks.

I hope you enjoyed following along with our first day in China. We're going to rest up tonight so we're fully charged tomorrow. Here's to finally getting a full night of Zzzzzs.. 🛌🏼😴

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