Shanghai Nights; or, Welcome to China!

After our first 24 hours on a sleeper train we arrived in Shanghai! Look how happy we are to be there! The train station was NUTS and I was a little worried that China was going to be too much for me. But after more people than I have ever seen in a small area in my life, we made it to our hostel and got settled and enjoyed Shanghai. We went to a Shanghai Acrobat show that was great--and had for the finale a lot of people driving motorcycles in a cage. Everyone went wild! One of my favorite parts of the trip was watching Chinese people. They were so fun--and they really did go CRAZY over the motorcycle finale. I was mostly very nervous!

We loved this so much that Matt broke the museum no pictures rules to capture it. From the Qing dynasty an ivory carving of a cricket on a banana. Random!

At the Shanghai Gardens

Shanghai had a great skyline.

Old Towne Shanghai

At the gardens I practiced my macro. Though not everyone was a fan, I had a good time.

Here I am carrying all of Matt's stuff. Admittedly, we went to Shanghai twice. We were there for a day then took off for Putuoshan and then came back for a day. Luckily we were able to leave our stuff at our hostel in Shanghai so we didn't have to carry it all with us on our two-day trip to Putuoshan. So, I did leave this backpack at the hostel...good thing because it was heavy!