Exploring Shanghai

So yet again I have managed to go way too long without updating my blog….woops! As I was importing my pictures from my most recent trip to São Paulo I realised I had a whole load of pictures from my flight to Shanghai in January, and I haven’t even written a post about it! So São Paulo will have to wait a little, and first I’m going to write about my wonderful time in Shanghai.

The flight going out is not very long (compared to the way back), lasting around 7ish hours. However it leaves Dubai at around 3 o’clock in the morning, which generally makes me feel very tired and confused as to what time it is when I arrive at the hotel! I can’t actually remember what we did in the evening, so I think I must have just fallen straight to sleep!

The next morning a group of us headed down to enjoy the breakfast buffet which surprisingly was smaller and had less choice than the time before! But who’s to complain, full up and ready to go we split into 2 taxis and drove to the Underground Market. What we hadn’t really thought about was that it was Chinese New Year’s Eve and almost all of the shops were shut! Not to be stopped by that though we all managed to come away having haggled for our money’s worth with some new handbags (the other girls) and a new purse (for me, after nail polish leaked all over my last one)!

Two of the girls decided shopping was far too tiring and headed back to the hotel, so I and the other two hopped in a cab again to go and visit the Yu Gardens.
When we arrived we were greeted by some beautiful temple-style buildings and hundreds of people! I guess everyone was off work for the holiday and they were out in full force with their families. Everywhere was filled with awesome decorations for Chinese New Year which made it a little bit more special!

ImageImageImageImageThe whole square area before entering the actual gardens was filled with decorations.ImageImageImageTo get to the gardens you have to go over a bridge, and all along the water they’d put up scenes from different films etc, there was even one with the Seven Dwarfs!ImageImageImageInside the gardens there were lots of different pathways and secretive holes in the wall that you could go through to find other parts.ImageImageImageImageImage

After the Yu Gardens we headed back to the hotel to have a little power nap before getting ready for the flight home (about 10 hours). As I was getting ready there were fireworks going off all around the city, and whilst flying as it was approaching midnight the whole city was lit up with hundreds and hundreds of fireworks, definitely one of the most amazing things I’ve seen from the sky!

There’s so so much more I want to explore in Shanghai, but at the moment I’ve still got a lot of destinations that I haven’t been to that I’d like to go to as well! I’m just waiting for my March roster to be published, I’m supposed to be on reserve (a month of not knowing where you’ll be going!) but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll skip it! 

 

P.s. If you want more regular day to day updates of what is happening in my life, follow me on Twitter and Instagram @rachelwwilson!