Day 1 - Shanghai

Welcome to Asia!  After a 15 hour plane ride with NO movies (ours were broken) we have arrived! We stayed at the Bund Riverside Hotel which was a pretty nice with a great location but our first hotel room had no window! How crazy. I didn't even know they made hotel rooms without windows!  The hotel also kept playing Christmas music.  I've heard of Christmas in July but Christmas in May was new to me!

Our first stop was was a traditional market typical of where the people of Shanghai go to get their food daily.  It was a bit different from the local Kroger! Shanghai is an enormous city even by American standards with 23 million people.

Our next stop was the Bund where the river separates the new city from the old city.  Across the river you see the bottle opener building which is Shanghai's tallest building at 101 stories. The pink balls are the Oriental TV Tower and it was the first tall building on that side of the river completed in 1994. I cannot believe how much has been built on that side of the river in just 17 years!  I promise the city isn't all this grey, it is just the smog.

Our stop in the afternoon was the Yu Yuan Gardens. This was originally an individual's private garden.

My favorite part of the garden was the dragon/snake wall.  Back when the garden was built, in 1559, no one but the emperor could use the symbol of the dragon.  In order to skirt that law, they put a dragon head on a snake's body.

The gardens were a really calm and serene place.  We ended our night at an acrobat show.  Some of the acts were a little slow and we were in need of some sleep, but we had a great start to our Asian Adventure!