Beijing to Shanghai via discomfort

Day 51 - 15/07/2010 - 22:08 - Shanghai, China

So we survived the horror that was the train journey in a seat, overnight. I was very annoyed when I saw how luxurious the Chinese sleepers on our train were. Even more enraged when I saw our seats, which were about as comfortable as the seats on the Cross City line in Birmingham. The legroom was OK though, a plus - about the only one. They never turned the lights off either - 50% of them went off for maybe 6 hours. Bad, bad times. But, we're in Shanghai, the room is nice, the location great and considering the lack of sleep I've had, I'm feeling OK.

Yesterday was our last day in Beijing. I was really sad to leave to be honest, if you exclude the Mongolian tour (which had no fixed location) Beijing is probably my favourite place so far - displacing Tallinn of top spot and pushing Moscow into 3rd. We did our usual, taking time to check out and got a taxi to Beijing South train station to drop the bags off before heading into the city one last time. The taxi took half an hour yet was still only £3.80 - I love Beijing (or BJ as those I love NY imitation T-shirts put it - yes it's not the best choice of alliteration to name a city on a T-shirt).

We found a duck restaurant that I vaguely remembered from the Temple of Heaven visit - turned out to be there and I wasn't seeing things. We had an absolute feast for lunch - Beijing Duck (pancakes, celery/onion, sauce), Duck in a beer based hotpot with chili and garlic (a real nice surprise, was so so nice) as well as some spare ribs. The meal was only £12, which included rice and a big bottle of coke between us (I'd learnt from our last mistake).

By the time we'd eaten we only had 1.5 hours to get to the Summer Palace and look around, which is what we'd wanted to do. Unfortunately, we decided against it, we'd have only had around 45 minutes there. Instead, we headed towards Jing Shan Park which was near forbidden city. The park was famous for being the spot where the last emperor of the Ming Dynasty hung himself. Like the Temple of Heaven, the park was big enough to lose yourself from the crowds, and although the pavilion on top of the hill with a panorama over the city was an obvious choke point for tourists, it was still very nice up there, and worth the walk up the hill in the heat and humidity.

After that we headed back to the station and awaited the train to Shanghai, which as I mentioned above wasn't great. We're booking the trains from Guangzhou to Hanoi tomorrow, to save that happening again (it will be a little more expensive but better safe than sorry) and we've booked our HK-Guangzhou train today online. Hopefully no more unexpected flights and extra nights in airport hotels (which is where we're staying on the 4th night in Shanghai).

So today we arrived at 7:30am into Shanghai. We managed to work out the metro system and make our way 2 stops east to the Nanjing pedestrian street where our hotel is. We'd read on Trip Advisor that the staff can be a bit moody, today was no exception. That said, they still let us check in really early to dump our bags whilst we got something to eat and drink and they cleaned the room.

We had a little nap, nothing big and then decided to head out - our first port of call being the Jing'an temple. It was rather nice, and looked pretty modern so it made a refreshing change to the rest of the temples we'd seen. It was also used by worshippers, which is always more authentic. The only downside was the £3 entry and there wasn't much to see.

We went for lunch at our favourite chain restaurant (they have one in the basement of the dept store here - Yonghe King the chain is called). It was slightly more expensive than the one in Beijing - I could see a pattern developing here but still nothing to grumble about.

After lunch we headed to the business district - our aim to go to the top of the Shanghai Financial Centre - the 2nd tallest building in the world. The surrounding area is scattered with tall building but the "bottle opener" (google SFC) was the one that stuck out. Unfortunately, £15 EACH to essentially use a lift was not expected and we didn't end up going up it as we couldn't justify the money. It's not exactly a New York skyline here, there are only a few buildings that would look better from such a height. Very very disappointed.

This evening we've been relaxing, and we walked down from the other end of Nanjing Road east back to our hotel. We went out this evening in search of a shop for supplies and we're pleasantly surprised to see some nice looking street food vendors down a side street around the corner from our hotel. We had a couple of meat skewers each - total cost 80p. Yay.

Shanghai seems nice, but it does have that London feel to it - the English influence, everything crammed into a small are and also coupled with expensive attractions - they even have their own Madam Tussuad's here!