Today started early, 6am the alarm went off and we prepared for takeoff. Kim checked us out from the hostel, and we learned that we still had one more night booked... When Kim told me that I realised that was indeed the case, and Kim managed to get money back for the following night, yaay. The hostel reception also fixed us an Uber from the hostel to the trainstation.
When the hostel books the ride to the wrong trainstation...
The slight issue with the uber was that the hostel guy, even though they booked our trainticket aswell, told the driver, whom only speaks chinese, that we were going to the west trainstation. Which was not the case, since our train leaves from the south station. If you speak to a person that doesn't speak any english, it's hard to tell them that they are going the wrong way. But what is good is that each day in China, my language skills are coming back to me. And I was able to communicate enough to make him understand which station we where going to. Good that I heard him saying "xi" instead of "nan", Xi being west, and Nan being south.
When we reached the south trainstation, we had plenty of time to find our way
We got ourself some coffee and breakfast from starbucks and sat down to wait for the train. We had about an hour before we could bord the train, which felt nice. Once going to the train, we were a bit lost, which ofcourse a chinese dude noticed so he said "how many are you?" - "we are 2 people" - "good, come, you get VIP". We followed him and we could skip all the waitingline, he and his friend took our bags for us and we could just follow. They showed us our seats and put our bags where them should be... now is what gets funny, they now wanted money from us... ofcourse.. I know that there are people like this everywhere in China, and you should always just tell them to go away. But us being a bit tired and lost, we fell for it! :D We did not feel like arguing so I just gave them 100 Yuan and that was it. After that I told my self that it was Ok, we got tricked, but atleast we did not need to stand in line :D
Going by the bullet train to Shanghai, 1200km in 4.5 hours
The train is really nice compared to the swedish trains... This one goes smoother, is not as noisy and is way faster. There is a screen showing the speed and it topped 351km/h at some point. Most of the time it was betwen 320-340km/h, and running smooth! I have used this train before, but at that time I had better seating. I think I rode by business class last time because I got to sit in a luxury seat. This time the seat was pretty much like the average SJ seat (swedish railway operator). During the trainride there was workers cleaning the line, assisting the passengers and walking by to take our trash. Also about 2x hour there was a food cart going by, and at one point they had warm meals, and at a later point desert.
At Shanghai trainstation everything went smooth
They are much more efficient in Shanghai, better traffic, better order and people seem more well behaved overall. We took a cab to the hotel we are staying at and was pleasantly suprised about the quality of it. Feels also to stay at this place after a week in a budget place. When the cab arrived they took our bags into the lobby, the hotel has a tailor in the lobby, a nice café, is 27 stories high, has a big gym with decent equipment, and a big pool. The later we used now in the evening after a long day of walking the streets of Shanghai.
The plan was to check out our neighbourhood, it ended up being 22,000 steps
Kim was a bit tired after the trainride, and her calves and feet are starting to hurt. So we planned to just go out around the neighbourhood and then have a slow first day. However it ended up being the neighbourhood that ended up into a full day of exploring.
First we scoped for somewhere to get coffee in the morning, which we found plenty, then we just followed a hunch and found a nice mall. Our plan in the mall was to find a place with wifi to locate ourself in Shanghai, since we had no idea where we are, and no idea where we should go. We stopped by a bakery in the mall and bought an pumpkin bread so we could feel legit using their wifi.
The bread had pumpkin filling inside it and tasted really nice. We knew from before that we wanted to find the bund, which is the one place everyone knows in Shanghai. We also plan to reach the nanjing road, which is a shoppingstreet that is 5.5km long, it is the longest shoppingstreet in china (mby the world?). Us being so crappy shoppers we could feel safe being there, since we would not waste any money anyway :D.
We did not plan to go there today, but ended up at both places anyway
apparently we booked a hotel that had a nice location, since it is located at the end of the nanjing shopping street, about 500m from it... So when we saw a sign that said "Nanjing lu", I knew we could find our way to the bund. when I say that I "knew", I guessed with a hunch that I was correct... Which I was.
We also found a place called "Yun italia", which if you read it out loud sounds like "genitalia"... Which I found pretty funny. There are a lot of places with great names in China.
At the end of nanjing road you find the bund
But when we reached that, Kim's feets were killing her, so we decided not to go over to the island but instead find a place to sit down and eat. Today is the first day of the trip where pregnant Kim is affecting our decisions, which is cool, since it has not had any real effect on the trip so far. Her energy was low, mainly because swollen calves and feet, but also because of a long day travelling. So she wanted to eat something familiar and nothing wierd... today that meant Mc Donalds.
Not my favorite place, as I won't eat at that place in Sweden, however, in China I kind of like it. They have some cool menu items that doesn't exist in Sweden, and if it does, it's not the same taste. We both had a spicy chicken burger and I had some chicken popcorn to go with that. Chicken popcorn is really just small pieces of chicken that is deep fried.
We ended up walking the entire way back, even though we planned to take a subway
We just kept walking, but on the way Kim had to sit down to rest her legs. However, she did not want to take a ride home. Our mission on the way back was to find some water for the night/morning, which took us all the way back to the neighbourhood of the hotel. Once back we went to the pool to relax, but ended up swimming and I did some push-ups as an addition. 100 push-ups a day keeps the paindemons away.
Exercise wise, I have not done much this last week
We have been walking 20,000-30,000 steps per day since we arrived, but I have not gotten a full workout in since arriving to China. So it felt nice to do some swimming and push-ups. I brought a rubber band from home and has been doing some pulling exercises to keep my back healthy, and some push-ups in the hostel room, but thats about it. Tomorrow morning we decided to have a slow start, to let kims legs rest, so my plan is to get a heavy workout in the gym followed by a swimsession. Hurray for nice hotels! :D
Now our swimming gear is hanging over the tub in the bathroom and we are about to sleep.
Feels nice to have a proper place to do some blogging, tomorrow morning I just need to go out to get some coffee, if we don't order room service before the workout.
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coach bjork
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