(From our trip in April 2018)

Well now that we are finally on our own running wild and loose in China we did what every teenager does when the parents are gone – we slept in!!!!  Hahahaha yep we were exhausted and needed an extra long horizontal life pause before heading out to start to the day.

Once we finally dragged our saggy arses out of bed we hit up a bit of Shanghai wandering.  We walked a few blocks off the main shopping street and were stunned at how quickly the conditions turned “residential”.  It was quite an eye opener, if I’m honest, that the housing went downhill so quickly from the main street.

We are so impressed with Shanghai, it’s a really easy city to navigate and has a great vibe.  And I’m really getting into my groove with telling the hawkers to “back up off me boo”.  (Boo is how you say no or stop).

Now comes the scary part – our first time ordering food on our own.  Not gonna lie we were nervous because we didn’t want to accidentally order up a bowl of “insert your favourite weird and wonderful icky animal here”.

Some of the food items on the menu – horse intestines, western meat, chicken gristle so you can see why my darling husband has broken out into a sweat in this photo when we were trying to decide what to “tick”.

This wasn’t quite a get in my belly moment, more of a what won’t I die from moment.  Here is our somewhat uninspiring selections but hey we lived to tell the tale right.

After lunch and a bit more of a wander it was back to the room to rest and get ready for our next adventure for the day.  While I had a little nap husband thought he would go for a bit more of a wander.  He likes to do that in every city – just walk around aimlessly, checking things out and getting a feel for the place.  I was surprised how quickly he came back from his walk and was even more alarmed when I saw the colour was completely drained from his face.  Ahhhh the poor guy – he got his first dose of ~middle aged fat westerner walking around on his own in China~.  Cue the pimps and ladies selling their well, their “services”.  Within the space of 5 minutes he was approached by so many people offering him their special “services” that he just felt so uncomfortable.  He literally couldn’t walk 10 steps without someone accosting him.  And look, we’ve definitely found the hawkers on the street pretty persist so I can only imagine that the ladies and their pimps did not come to play when landing a middle aged white man.  They were very grabby, in your face persistent and it was A.L.O.T.!!!!

Husband of course wasn’t interested because well why would he be…..he’s running with the Queen my friends!!!  But needless to say he was a bit shaken by how aggressive they all were so if you’ll excuse my husband – he’s got some serious blanket forting to do for a while!!!

We should’ve been tipped off when we saw this sign on the actual front desk of our hotel.  Whew he avoided financial loss and injury and that’s what’s important haha

After a bit of “there there” and back patting the colour came back to husband’s face and we headed to the subway station.

The subways are fairly crowded but really no more than any other city at peak hour.  And this public transport system is soooooo easy to understand and use – I am super impressed!!!

My only issue was all the goddamn stairs in and out of the stations.  This will not be the last you hear of me whinging about stairs in China – there will be much more sooking on this subject.  Personal space really hasn’t been invented here and sometimes you feel like you want to say ::back up off me ya mole: but of course you don’t, because well don’t be a sucky human.

We were doing a food tour tonight and we had to get to the starting point which was nowhere near where we were.  Since this was our first subway adventure on our own, we left super early and had located a great bar nearby that we could while away an hour or two just to make sure we got there in time.  Well slap me silly if there wasn’t a huge dog show on the lawn of this bar/pub.  I was in puppy heaven that’s for sure.

The Cannery was the coolest bar I’ve been to in ages.  It was a Sunday afternoon, everyone was chilling and having a great time doing the whole Sunday sesh thing.  It was bevvy o’clock at it’s best!!!  They had their own meat smoking room too which I was particular obsessed with. If you visit Shanghai add this awesome place to your list.  Honestly husband and I seriously considered ditching the food tour to just stay here and hang with the cool kids.

But then we remembered we aren’t cool so after a few beers we headed off to the food tour.

We used Untour Food Tours after much research and the evening was great.  The guide Li, was so engaging and even though there was us and the rest of the tour group were Americans we were determined to have a good time hahaha.  Just joking, everyone was lovely – but you know, loud in that American kind of way that really only works in America.  We went to lots of yummy places but the first place which was essentially a food stand had the best food of the night – a pork sandwich which was to die for.

Here’s a highlight reel of some of the food

OMG standards have dropped and things are getting grim when you see cats playing outside and inside the restaurant you are eating at and it doesn’t even make you blink but hey, when in China lol.

There was one particular dish husband and I didn’t try – the rabbit heads.  Clearly we aren’t “fine diners” like the other members of the group.  One guy chowed down like a savage – I had to look away.

I thought the name of this restaurant raised a few questions too….but it’s true, Chilli really does make you rubby (in the bum)

As you know you don’t win friends with salad and China wants ALL.THE.FRIENDS so no fresh healthy food was harmed throughout.  I can highly recommend this tour, it gets great reviews and deservedly so.  It was a good way to try some of the local delicacies without fear of eating stuff that nightmares are made of.

Afterwards we happily caught the subway back to our hotel after what was a much more easy paced day and got some sleep.  A huge day coming up tomorrow….!