My Favorite Things: Shanghai

For almost all of February, I was traveling around Asia visiting different friends and exploring different cities. I figured that blogging about every detail of my whole month would probably take another whole month or more, so I decided to just share a few highlights from each place.

So here is the first installment of my new blog post series: My Favorite Things! Today's post topic - Shanghai!

Of course my number one favorite thing has to be seeing my boyfriend after 6 months :)

Richard at breakfast our first morning in Shanghai

But in terms of touristy things and seeing the city, here are a couple things I really liked:

1. Souvenir shopping around the Yu Yuan Garden and Temple of the Town God.

There are tons of shops all selling very Chinese style souvenirs.

The temple was super crowded because it was right around Chinese New Year!

I bought this teapot (and matching teacups)!

Richard, with his Chinese bargaining skills, also helped me buy some tea at one of the many tea shops to give away to friends! And he bought some pretty paintings on scrolls that I don't have pictures of to give to his boss.

One word of warning, though, I thought the food sold around the little shops there was just okay. But maybe that's just due to my American taste buds. Next time, I would rather spend more money and eat at Din Tai Feng :P

2. The Shanghai Ocean Aquarium!

I just think aquariums are cool, and this one has the longest underwater tunnel in the world (at least that's what I heard). Here are some pictures from inside the tunnel.

The aquarium is also a short walk away from the Jinmao Observation Tower... which, okay, wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. Observation towers are nice, and I like getting to see the whole city, but now that I've done it once, I don't need to do it again for a while, especially at a price of 100 RMB a person, which I think is pretty expensive for China.

View from the top. You can see the Oriental Pearl Tower!

At least I can say I've been once, though!

Overall, I really enjoyed Shanghai. There's good food and some fun things to see. I don't know if it would keep me entertained for more than 4 days, and you have to be okay with crowds (this is China), but I would definitely like to go back someday :)

Korea blog post coming soon!