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China, September 2005 Day 9 Our morning started bright and early at 6:30 a.m. with a walk along Nanjing Road, the busiest in the world according to our guide book. Our hotel sat at the beginning of the road and we walked toward the water at the end. On the way down, we found a lady making Chinese egg crepes and ordered two for RMB 2 each. Passed by a Starbucks and got a mocha for RMB 28 which was not so good...actually pretty bad. Passed by another coffee shop, Dante's and got an iced mocha (I'd only drink it after I saw a bunch of other foreigners drink them) for RMB 20 which was much better. On a particularly wide part of the tree-lined street with vast sidewalks, elderly Chinese people were taking their morning constitutionals in the form of waltzing, sword dancing, jazzercise and tai-chi. We ended our walk at the Peace Hotel (done in the Art Deco style from the 1920's) where Poobie proceeded to clean his pipes. We regrouped and measured that we'd walked 6 km from our hotel to the Bund. We hopped on the metro back to the hotel and were more than happy to escape the early morning heat by watching Monday night football, live at 11 a.m. on Tuesday. In the middle of the day, we took a taxi to the metro (it was too hot to walk for my mom) and then took the Metro to Pudong. There, my parents went to the museum at the bottom of the Oriental Pearl Tower and Poobie and I went to Jinmao Tower. It cost us RMB 50 each to go to the top of the tower and look down into the building and also out over the town. Then, intrigued by the view inside the tower of the Grand Hyatt, we took the elevator down and went around the building and took the Hyatt elevators up. Everyone in the hotel was impeccably dressed. Poob and I were in flip-flops and "casual attire." But with my typical American moxie, we went up to the restaurant on the highest floor, just under the observation platform, and proceeded to inspect the menu (expensive, but not outrageous). Then we went to the highest floor with rooms and took some pictures (note the Matrix picture). After descending and harassing the maitre'ds a bit from the other restaurants, we decided to go look for my parents. When we got to the Oriental Pearl, we learned that even to get into the building, we had to buy tickets. So we each paid RMB 35 to get in and wait for my parents in the basement. They took their sweet time! We had agreed to meet at 1:20 p.m. give or take half an hour and they were 30 minutes late beyond that! But we found out that instead of just going to the museum, they decided to go up the tower as well. We all took the metro back to the west bank and walked along Nanjing road. It was so hot, I succumbed once again to the McD's coke floats. We went shopping and both my mom and I bought Chinese cleavers for RMB 135 each. After a while, we needed a rest and we took tea on the 7th floor of a department store. In the search for one Shanghai-nese restaurant, we found a different one and had dinner. It was time to go home and clean up, so we took a taxi back to the hotel. With everyone showered and changed, we sat down in the lovely AC to eat some ice cream and watch a little HBO. This particular night we went to the Bund and found it to be wonderful. The buildings, while stately in the daytime, at night were beautifully lit up and made us feel very much as if were were walking along the Seine. On the walk along the water, hawkers were selling everything from postcards, to photographs to little LED doohickeys and wheels that attached to your shoes to make roller-skates that lit up when you wheeled around. Tired and sticky, we took a taxi home.
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