salut!

i'm positive about shanghai but the hotel is casting a negative shadow. strange drilling noises woke me at two and four this morning and we ate breakfast to the sounds of more drilling outside the windows!

but the sun is out and today we begin the guided bit. yesterday we tried to find the market and the french concession. we weren't actually lost but thought we were, lonely planet and the hotel map proving inadequate. we'd bought brollies because of the rain and really needed them as it turned into a tropical downpour just as we got ourselves into a busy shopping mall 'built in pseudo ming and qing style' as the brochure puts it! we ducked into starbucks for hot drinks and to dry out a bit. after that we wandered down back streets in the old city, two storey houses with all manner of shops on the ground floors, loaded rickshaws passing and lots of demolition too. confused by the road names we walked back towards the tallest building i'd noted earlier (lou is hopeless at this sort of thing i've discovered!) and found lunch on nanjing street, centre of the universe for the people of shanghai it would seem! :)

and then through sheer bloody mindedness on my part, we found an internet place. along the way we'd found several fabulous bookshops full of young people reading and clearly being encouraged to so - do they buy the books eventually?

a lovely chat with gav via james' site and a meander back to the hotel . interesting art deco buildings, lots of shops selling recycled engineering parts, rickshaws with chaps ringing bells, (macy told me they are rag and bone men), a little park where we were approached by a middle aged guy who spoke random french words to us! mostly consisting of 'merci beaucoup' and 'parisien'. i responded in kind! :)

then the hotel! :(

never mind, there is a bar that does a decent g and t and we buy nuts from the business centre...confused? so 'aperos' time chaque soir!

salut, nos amis!