China - Day 2 (Part 2)

After the Yu Garden we took a Taxi over to the Train Station to get tickets for the following nights journey to Beijing. There was a translator at the Tea House who was kind enough to write down what tickets we needed to buy in Chinese so we could just hand it to the ticket agent. That came in extremely helpful since the "English Speaking" line at the train station was not so great.

After we booked our tickets, we decided to reward ourselves with a little shopping. Our taxi cab let us off in front of what appeared to be a shopping mall. We went in and immediately were bombarded by these people trying to get us to their "special store" in the attic. Yeah right. I've seen those movies where they capture unsuspecting blond girls and sell them into sex slavery. We literally ran from them in this shopping mall for 20 minutes before we got back to the exit and left. Of course I had to snap a photo. Notice the woman covered her face. Clearly she is a wanted fugitive.


When we finally found the correct shopping are it was incredible! Rows and rows and floors and floors of vendors, ready to bargain with you. I had so much fun haggling prices. I bought 2 Louis Vuitton bags (fake, but who cares!) for around $12 each. It was fantastic. I was too busy shopping to get a photo of all the action, but here is a picture from the door looking in.



After we finished up there, we went across the street to a tiny cafe and had lunch. They didn't have an English menu or a menu with pictures so we got what I'm sure if standard non-Asian food - Lo Mein noodles. They were good and we were starving so no complaints. I just thought it was funny that we sat down and they just brought us noodles, LOL!

Tiffany and me at lunch


After lunch we took another Taxi over to the Pearl TV tower - the most famous building on the Shanghai Skyline. It is a really cool shape!



Across from the Pearl tower was a giant western style mall with a huge sign saying that H&M (one of my favorite stores since there are none here in TV) had just opened after our experience in the bargaining mall, we were hoping that this H&M would be cheap. We were disappointed to find it was the same price as the states! I did take a neat picture of all the people in the mall though. It was very crowded!



Instead of going into the Pearl, we decided to go up to the observation level of the Jin Mao Tower. It is the tallest building in China and gives a great view of the Pearl tower as well as the rest of the Shanghai Skyline. Here is a photo I took from the tower - I'm not editing it on purpose so you can see all the smog. Yuck!



There was a bar at the bottom of the observation deck that you could look down into. It was really cool looking and we decided to go chill down there for a while. Here's what it looked like from above:



And Tiffany ordered a drink called "Bootyjuice" so you know I had to get a picture of that.



And finally I snapped this pic on the way back up to street level to catch a cab back to our hotel. We were all so tired at this point. Notice our Chinese friend. I took 3 of these pics in hopes he would turn around and stop waving. No use, he is in every single one!!



Stay tuned for Day 3!!