We arrived early that morning, but our call time was still 7am. I volunteered to wake up first. Our room doesn’t have any towels, and since I’m the first one to get up, I went down to ask. Before doing so I checked my itouch translator application and learned that jin ma was the mandarin for towel. With that, I was able to survive my first mandarin communication-gap.hehe.

As planned, we went to Shanghai Railway Station to look for tickets. Anton and I queued up in line, while Xty looked in the train schedule board which was written in Chinese. Chinese people were rude in lines; they would cut in line if they could. And they would grunt and curse if the person in front of them was too slow. When it was our turn, we were horrified to know that all the tickets going to Xian were already sold out. There were no sleepers or seats left. To our horror, there were no train going to Beijing as well. All tickets were sold out. We asked around, and went to the English counter located in another building. There really was no seat left to Xian. Worse, the only available tickets going to Beijing were soft seats. These T train leaves at 1:30PM of Jun 21 and arrives at 5:30AM the next day. That was a 16-hour trip. Reality bites and it seemed that we have no choice so we booked the soft seats. We were actually willing to buy seat-less tickets if we need to. At that point, we were pondering of a possible solution to salvage out Xian and the terracotta warriors. We thought we could probably reverse our itinerary, or we could probably look for a flight to Xian. Our Xian trip was doomed.

We wasted a lot of time because of that incident. But since we couldn’t dwell on such problems, we decided to move on and continue our itinerary. First stop, Yuyuan gardens and Temple of the Town god.

Temple of the Town God and Yuyuan Gardens

After a delicious but oily lunch, we went to the metro and alight at Yuyuan Garden station. I never thought that this area was filled with so much people. We saw a temple but it never occurred to me that this is the Temple of the Town God. I would say that the highlight of this area is the tourist shopping arcade not the temple. We enjoyed the sights and saw the entrance to Yuyuan Garden, but we decided not to enter.

Nanjing Road and the Bund

Next to our itinerary were Nanjing Road and the Bund. We alighted at Nanjing East station and walked our way to the Bund. The long walk to the Bund was worth it. The view of the east side of the Huangpu river was stunning. You could see Shanghai’s famous landmark, the Shanghai Tower. You could also see a lot of tall buildings as well – Jin Mao and the Shanghai World Financial Center. After taking some pictures, including those on the west side of Huangpu river, we decided to set off to our next destination – Jin Mao Observatory 88.

Jin Mao Tower

We walked back to Nanjing East station and off we went to Lujiazhui station. We decided to check what Shanghai looked like when seen below. In our research, Jin Mao tower observatory has the cheapest entrance, so we decided to go there. Again, the long walk to JinMao tower was worth it. The view of the skyline was stunning. We take a few pictures and decided it’s time to take a little break, so off we went to a mall near the Luijazhui station.

Nanjing Road again

After drinking some coffee-flavoured milk tea at KFC, we went back to Lujiazhui station and went back to Nanjing East station. Instead of going to east side (the Bund), we went the other way. Nanjing road is a large shopping street. It’s so huge that there were mini trams and rickshaw-like vehicles offering services to navigate the whole shopping district. The shopping district was so huge that we decided to take another break so that our feet can relax. At the end of the district, we hopped at the metro (not sure if it’s People’s park) and off we went to XinTianDi station.

Xintiandi

Xintiandi’s another tourist-haven. We noticed that most western tourists were dining here. It’s similar to Greenbelt or Libis. This area was filled with western-style shops and restaurants. It was getting dark when we left.

The Bund Again

French Concession was our next stop. But since it’s probably another Xintiandi, we scrapped it out and decided to check the Bund at night. So off we went to Nanjing road East station again to see the Bund.

Yaiks! We never thought that there were a lot of people here at the night. We were walking slowly now, because there were so many people, there’s not much road to step into. We didn’t even get the chance to take a good spot for pictures. We’re happy enough to enjoy the sight of the colourful buildings at night. Finally, we call it a day and decided to go back to our hotel.

In one day, we were able to visit most of the tourist spots in Shanghai. Our day was filled with so much walking that I wouldn’t recommend this itinerary to those who were not used in taking long walks.

Entrance fees:

Yuyuan garden entrance:  40

Temple of the Town God entrance: 10

JinMao Observatory 88 entrance: 88

Actually our night didn’t end there. Since we were unable to book a train ticket to Xian, Xty and I asked our hotel staff regarding possible flights/ trains going to Xi’an. She seemed overwhelmed at our absurd request. She’s trying to reason out where Xi’an and Hangzhou were, which we already know. We checked the internet to look for flights, and we even thought of going to Shanghai Hongqiao airport in the morning to find a possible flight to Xian. The staff found a flight worth RMB2000+, so we decided to finally scrap our Xi’an trip. 

More pictures of Shanghai here:

(Click on the picture to view the album)