Sightseeing in Shanghai....

Thursday morning my mom and I decided to walk outside (the exercise room did have A/C- miserable). Well it turned into a 2-hour walk because all we had was our Chinese map, which wasn't super helpful. We did see some interesting things though...

First of all- this is a side note, but I was ASTONISHED. We were on the 18th floor of our hotel and our window opened- that just doesn't seem safe. 

We stumbled upon this park on our walk (around 7:30am). There were TONS (hundreds) of people doing some exercise, I think called Tai Chi. I was trying to discreetly take pictures.

My mom is in the white walking ahead.

Name of the park: Xiangyang Park.

                    Not sure what the following pictures are of, but thought they were pretty:

This is a famous temple in Shanghai.

We did a little sightseeing on Thursday night and Friday afternoon. It wasn't much but here's what we saw....
                                          The Bund: My favorite part about Shanghai ( thursday night )

Thought the top of this building was cool

In the cab...

The European looking side of the Bund.... the lights were amazing

Across the river....The NYC Times Square side...

I believe this is the Pearl TV tower...pretty famous.

Trying to show how crowded it was....

There were all these boats with extravagant lights on the river...

View from where we ate....the WORST restaurant ever. The menu had things such as Fried Duck Tongue, Turtle, Bullfrog, etc. Not really things I was trying to eat.... We ended up eating back at the hotel. We actually called my dad trying to figure out where a few really nice restaurants are, but it's hard to explain street names when they are in Chinese. 

Before we went, I did a little research on what to see. One of the things listed was the Yuyuan Garden. So here are the pictures of the garden and things we encountered looking for it:

Our cab driver (who of course didn't understand English) dropped us off here. It took us about 30 minutes to figure out where to go, finally a nice guy stopped and helped us.

We thought maybe this was the garden...lots of bamboo...

We were wondering where to pay though....

So we ended up back around this market...which was packed and people harassed us to buy stuff. It was also miserably hot. 

Finally found the garden...

Lots of Koi fish swimming...

Inside the garden...

Really cool architecture...

Sign for the garden...

There were really cool rock sculptures everywhere...

Lots of awkward solo shots on this trip...

Really detailed dragon wall...

Counting down the minutes until I can leave and shower...

Columns on wall made out of jade.

Pretty lanterns...

Statue leaving the gardens...

Back in the market....

Famous tea house...

Creepy rides in the market...I thought they were creepy at least.

The park we originally thought was the garden.

On the internet, a review recommended allowing 2 hours for the garden. I was frustrated because we didn't get there until 4:15 (ughhh work) and it closed at 5. However, Carole and I had seen enough of the gardens within 15 minutes. IT WAS SO HOT. Seriously you can't imagine the heat. So we decided, although we would love to go back to Shanghai, we probably will not go to the gardens. They were beautiful but it's a major tourist trap. That was pretty much it for our sightseeing.