Sunday, June 17, 2012
Happy Fathers Day!
I'm back from China and we're down in Avila Beach for Father's Day weekend! Beautiful weather and we're just enjoying the beach time. For a California beach, the water is surprisingly not freezing and N is enjoying wading and splashing.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Colorful city
We went to the Vue bar at the top of the Hyatt last night. 100cny per person cover charge which included 2 of their "drink of the day" per person. The drink of yesterday was a caipirinha so no complaints from me.
Anyway, on to the main point - the view was incredible!! This was an open-air rooftop patio that was right on the rivers' edge. Breathtaking view despite the smog :)
The bar was super swanky and even had a jacuzzi in the middle of it! And yes, there were people in it. We felt like we were on the set of The Hangover - it was unexpected but somehow fit the vibe of the place. Very cool!
We followed it up with the most incredible dinner we've had all week. Sans the "exotic" dishes, everything else was so good that we ordered a second round of almost everything.
Food wise, my tummy has been happy this week - including the Papa Johns pizza they ordered in for lunch yesterday :)
There's a team dinner and karaoke tonight with the local team. Should be a fun evening!
Oh and it's still unbearably hot :-/
Anyway, on to the main point - the view was incredible!! This was an open-air rooftop patio that was right on the rivers' edge. Breathtaking view despite the smog :)
The bar was super swanky and even had a jacuzzi in the middle of it! And yes, there were people in it. We felt like we were on the set of The Hangover - it was unexpected but somehow fit the vibe of the place. Very cool!
We followed it up with the most incredible dinner we've had all week. Sans the "exotic" dishes, everything else was so good that we ordered a second round of almost everything.
Food wise, my tummy has been happy this week - including the Papa Johns pizza they ordered in for lunch yesterday :)
There's a team dinner and karaoke tonight with the local team. Should be a fun evening!
Oh and it's still unbearably hot :-/
Monday, June 11, 2012
Reality sets in!
It's crazy hot here! Two or more showers per day kind of hot. It's so humid that an envelope which I am using to save receipts sealed itself, and the receipts inside it are damp. My hair has gotten big - very big.
On Sunday, five of us decided to take a Hop On Hop Off tour to see some of the city. Stop 1 was a block from our hotel - convenient. Stops 2-4 appeared to be different sides of the same park so we planned to Hop Off at the Bund - Stop 5.
The guide recommended walking along the Bund to Stop 6 so we set off on foot, humidity sucking us further and further into sweaty delirium with every step. We walked and walked and walked and Stop 6 was nowhere to be found! This was a fine moment to realize that the map we had only had *some* street names marked while others were just mystery roads.
So we bravely decided to just walk on over to Old Shanghai behind Yu Garden. There was a dumpling place that the hotel concierge recommended for lunch and we were starving! Old Shangai was super confusing - there turned out to be 4 dumpling places so we just picked one. I don't handle that kind of humidity too well and it totally zapped my appetite so my lunch was a TsingTao and a spring roll!
Stop 7 was supposed to be just across from Old Shanghai we thought we'd reconnect with our tour and carry on to a couple of temples. We asked the waiter which way the main entrance to the area was since we had come in from what we think was the side. Confident that we had good directions and re-energized after an air conditioned break, we were off.
When we reached what we thought was the bus stop, there was no Point 7 to be seen anywhere. We asked 3 people including a cop. All 3 looked puzzled, stopped someone else to confer with them, debated something back and forth with the person and then gave us directions confidently. They were wrong. They were ALL wrong. Each person had sent us off in 3 different directions. When none of those worked we tried the 4th direction and arrived in front of the landmark that the map showed as the Point 7 pickup. But...no point 7. It was getting late and we missed the window for going to the temple. Hot and frustrated, we gave up and took a cab back to the hotel. The tour ended up being nothing more than a $44/person transport from our hotel to the Bund. :(
On the plus side, that evening we found what we are calling Santana Row. It's an area full of upscale, nice restaurants and bars. It's familiar and comfortable and we all breathed a sigh of familiar relief when we saw it. We've now been there for dinner 2 nights in a row and I'm sure we'll be back there tonight!
Oh and we had lunch with our local team here yesterday and I got cornered into trying some foods that I would rather not have even seen, let alone tasted.
It's sensory overload here - hot, humid, polluted, maniacal taxi drivers!, and crowded. "Santana Row" and our hotel are nice sanctuaries though.
Let's see how the rest of the week goes but I haven't started loving Shanghai yet.
On Sunday, five of us decided to take a Hop On Hop Off tour to see some of the city. Stop 1 was a block from our hotel - convenient. Stops 2-4 appeared to be different sides of the same park so we planned to Hop Off at the Bund - Stop 5.
The guide recommended walking along the Bund to Stop 6 so we set off on foot, humidity sucking us further and further into sweaty delirium with every step. We walked and walked and walked and Stop 6 was nowhere to be found! This was a fine moment to realize that the map we had only had *some* street names marked while others were just mystery roads.
So we bravely decided to just walk on over to Old Shanghai behind Yu Garden. There was a dumpling place that the hotel concierge recommended for lunch and we were starving! Old Shangai was super confusing - there turned out to be 4 dumpling places so we just picked one. I don't handle that kind of humidity too well and it totally zapped my appetite so my lunch was a TsingTao and a spring roll!
Stop 7 was supposed to be just across from Old Shanghai we thought we'd reconnect with our tour and carry on to a couple of temples. We asked the waiter which way the main entrance to the area was since we had come in from what we think was the side. Confident that we had good directions and re-energized after an air conditioned break, we were off.
When we reached what we thought was the bus stop, there was no Point 7 to be seen anywhere. We asked 3 people including a cop. All 3 looked puzzled, stopped someone else to confer with them, debated something back and forth with the person and then gave us directions confidently. They were wrong. They were ALL wrong. Each person had sent us off in 3 different directions. When none of those worked we tried the 4th direction and arrived in front of the landmark that the map showed as the Point 7 pickup. But...no point 7. It was getting late and we missed the window for going to the temple. Hot and frustrated, we gave up and took a cab back to the hotel. The tour ended up being nothing more than a $44/person transport from our hotel to the Bund. :(
On the plus side, that evening we found what we are calling Santana Row. It's an area full of upscale, nice restaurants and bars. It's familiar and comfortable and we all breathed a sigh of familiar relief when we saw it. We've now been there for dinner 2 nights in a row and I'm sure we'll be back there tonight!
Oh and we had lunch with our local team here yesterday and I got cornered into trying some foods that I would rather not have even seen, let alone tasted.
It's sensory overload here - hot, humid, polluted, maniacal taxi drivers!, and crowded. "Santana Row" and our hotel are nice sanctuaries though.
Let's see how the rest of the week goes but I haven't started loving Shanghai yet.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Adventures in Shangai
Here I am in Shanghai for the next week+. I've been kind of wary of this trip (food, language, humidity that has already made my hair big, and being away from my family for so long) but so far I'm doing A-OK.
The flight was great - I watched:
Agneepath (and sobbed like a baby)
21 Jump Street (super funny)
Love Aaj Kal (funniest and most ignorant line yet from a Bollywood movie "she's from Singapore. 100% Chinese." Uuhhh...ok my geography isn't perfect but I'm pretty sure that line offended the Singaporean lady sitting across from me who also watched that movie!
The Descendants - only 20 mins of it before I realized that I wanted to wait and see it with Amit.
So...with all that plus a few cocktails and I was having a pleasant flight.
Now here I am at Le Meridian - great location - seems to be in the middle of everything.
For those who are dying to know about the cuisine, I chose NOT to order the grilled silkworm or the baked pig skin for dinner last night but instead opted for some good old shrimp in chili sauce. It was super good.
Up at 5am today thanks to either jet lag or being accustomed to getting no more than 6 hrs of sleep at a time, I was in the gym by 6, and now ready for a day of sightseeing.
Oh and I'm excited to report that I found a loophole - FB is blocked on the web but the app works! Data plan is outrageous so I'll keep check-ins to a min. Interestingly enough, blogger is blocked too so I'm using the app right now.
The flight was great - I watched:
Agneepath (and sobbed like a baby)
21 Jump Street (super funny)
Love Aaj Kal (funniest and most ignorant line yet from a Bollywood movie "she's from Singapore. 100% Chinese." Uuhhh...ok my geography isn't perfect but I'm pretty sure that line offended the Singaporean lady sitting across from me who also watched that movie!
The Descendants - only 20 mins of it before I realized that I wanted to wait and see it with Amit.
So...with all that plus a few cocktails and I was having a pleasant flight.
Now here I am at Le Meridian - great location - seems to be in the middle of everything.
For those who are dying to know about the cuisine, I chose NOT to order the grilled silkworm or the baked pig skin for dinner last night but instead opted for some good old shrimp in chili sauce. It was super good.
Up at 5am today thanks to either jet lag or being accustomed to getting no more than 6 hrs of sleep at a time, I was in the gym by 6, and now ready for a day of sightseeing.
Oh and I'm excited to report that I found a loophole - FB is blocked on the web but the app works! Data plan is outrageous so I'll keep check-ins to a min. Interestingly enough, blogger is blocked too so I'm using the app right now.
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