Day 20: getting crabby in Shanghai
As we were leaving the hotel, Jerome realized he had left his ATM card in the machine the night before. So the day started with a trip to the Bank of China (see experience in Heze). They couldn't help us so we made a trip next door to the Peace Hotel to use their internet because of course we didn't take the number of the bank with us. Jerome managed to contact the 24 hour emergency number to put his card on hold. But he still had to get in touch with the bank in Lille to cancel his card. And the only available number was a free phone number that of course doesn't work from abroad. He had to wait for 6 hours until he could try again (time zones and all). He tried to track down the number by calling other branches of the same bank but no one had a "real" phone number. We finally sent an email to a friend - promising loads of gifts of course - who was able to cancel the card. Thank you Bryony!
In the meantime, we visited Nanjing Lu the main shopping street in Shanghai. Jerome finally found his red ink stone (see Heze) and a perfumed black ink stone. We walked down the street and looked at the remarkable way that bamboo is used as scapholding everywhere, even on very tall buildings. We ate at a Japanese noodle shop from where we could see the roof across the street. It was piled with junk and we couldn't figure out what the guys were doing up there...
After lunch, we went to see the old synagogue but it was really boring and we didn't stay very long. We wandered around the neighborhood which was full of what looked like English row houses except there were Chinese people sitting around in their underswear and making food in the stairwells.
From there we decided to go see the 87 floor Jin Mao Tower in Pudong. We settled for the Hyatt's lobb on the 54th floor because the ride to the top was way too expensive ad the bar on the 86th floor was closed. We pushed our noses against the windows and looked across the river for a while.
To get back to the other side of the river, we decided to take the Bund Touristic Tunnel not knowing exactly what it was. We had a good laugh...it was like being in a really slow subway car with psychadelic lights and new age music. Each time the "show" changed, a voice came on to give the title of the sequence like "Magma Infusion" or "Dancing Water".
Jerome finally had his crab for dinner at a place where the waiters laughed at his feable attempts at eating it with chopsticks. We were both severely chopstick impaired so we gave the wait staff a good show.
In the meantime, we visited Nanjing Lu the main shopping street in Shanghai. Jerome finally found his red ink stone (see Heze) and a perfumed black ink stone. We walked down the street and looked at the remarkable way that bamboo is used as scapholding everywhere, even on very tall buildings. We ate at a Japanese noodle shop from where we could see the roof across the street. It was piled with junk and we couldn't figure out what the guys were doing up there...
After lunch, we went to see the old synagogue but it was really boring and we didn't stay very long. We wandered around the neighborhood which was full of what looked like English row houses except there were Chinese people sitting around in their underswear and making food in the stairwells.
From there we decided to go see the 87 floor Jin Mao Tower in Pudong. We settled for the Hyatt's lobb on the 54th floor because the ride to the top was way too expensive ad the bar on the 86th floor was closed. We pushed our noses against the windows and looked across the river for a while.
To get back to the other side of the river, we decided to take the Bund Touristic Tunnel not knowing exactly what it was. We had a good laugh...it was like being in a really slow subway car with psychadelic lights and new age music. Each time the "show" changed, a voice came on to give the title of the sequence like "Magma Infusion" or "Dancing Water".
Jerome finally had his crab for dinner at a place where the waiters laughed at his feable attempts at eating it with chopsticks. We were both severely chopstick impaired so we gave the wait staff a good show.
posted by Gros Joe at
11:30 AM
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