Friday, 13 April 2018

12 Zhujiajiao and all the other people....

We woke up the next morning and went to breakfast. Did I mention how bad it had been the day before? It was pretty terrible. Today was even worse. They barely had any food left and pretty much the only thing I was willing to eat was noodles. The eggs were grey, and there wasn't much else besides weird soup. There wasn't tea or juice, just "lemonade" which was hot water with lemon that just sat there all morning. Ick!
We headed to the subway station, which thankfully was nearby and caught the train to Line 17. Line 17 started below ground and then went above ground. It was nice to see the countryside go by. It's crazy how small Shanghai seems when you don't see the city before the fields. We arrived at Zhujiajiao station and followed the signs to the "Tourist Area".






They had all these great signs until the last turn. Thankfully we didn't go too far off track before we realized we needed to turn around. We wandered these awesome little streets with authentic food and found ourselves on a canal.












We wandered around for a few hours. I tried a giant egg roll, even watched it being made before it was cooked.



And contemplated getting rice wrapped in some kind of leaf. However, watching the women making them and seeing the raw meat put in kind of changed my mind.


When we first arrived there had been all these barriers set up and we wondered why. It was busy but not that bad. By the time we left, it was packed. We could barely move! And there were people lined up to get into the area when we walked out. (They have a limit to how many people can be inside the area at once).



We walked back to the metro station, about 3 km. Along the way, I stopped and got a sort of green onion cake and some sort of small donut like treat. They were both delicious!

When we arrived back into the city, we went to People's Square to catch the bus to the river. Part of our ticket included a ferry ticket so we went over to take that across the river. We lined up like cattle waiting to get on the ferry and then as soon as it emptied, everyone pushed and ran to get on the boat. Everyone wanted the top deck, including us! Once on the other side, we caught another bus to do a route of that side, called the Lujiazui. It was a short route but it was neat to see the modern buildings, a huge contrast to the other side we had explored already.
















We caught the ferry back and caught a bus that took us to the end of the Bund.


From there we were going to walk to Nanjing Pedestrian Road since the buses were almost done running and it wasn't too far. It was neat to see some of the areas not so full of people, when we rounded a corner and were shocked to find a packed side walk.








When I say packed, it was one way and about 8 people across. People were spilling out into the road. Cops were there to give at least 1 lane to cars. It was crazy! We finally made it to Nanjing where we wanted to at least make it until night time to see all the lights!

We were also ready to eat so decided to spend the time searching for a restaurant. A lot of the places we went to had similar menus. They were pretty traditional Chinese foods, a whole chicken in soup, and by whole I mean head and all. Turtle was an option, pigs feet, tripe, and the list goes on. We sat down at one place and Sarah ordered Wonton Soup. I didn't see anything I wanted so we ended up leaving before they put the order in. We couldn't find anything to eat and Sarah couldn't wait so she decided to eat at an Irish restaurant. I sat with her and when she was done, I found a place that did Chinese Hamburgers which I had been wanting to try. It's pork, slow cooked, with some sauces, cucumber and all chopped up and put between two flat buns. It was delicious! By now it was dark, we saw the amazing lights of the street and then headed back to our hotel.





It's hard to believe how fast 2 weeks in China flew by!

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