Wandering Browns

View of Nanjing road from the river/Bund Mid- Nanjing road with the crowds There are only a few options for crossing the river at the Bund. You can take a water taxi, the Bund sightseeing tunnel (for too much money) or metro line 2. We opted for the metro as we had day passes that were significantly cheaper than the sightseeing tunnel. That meant to return to our hotel, we visited Nanjing road at night. Much like the buildings along the river, Nanjing road was lit up with all sorts of multi-colored lights, and it had cooled off making it a slightly more enjoyable walk. The crowds and late hour deterred us from walking around more, but as the central street of downtown, it was worth the few minutes we spent enjoying it.  Nanjing road with the Brown boys After a long day of walking, lines and crowds, Austin and I limped back to our hotel room. We discovered that me in my pregnant state and we both in our older state with a toddler could not do as much trekking around ...

Late afternoon view of Lujiazui area with the Pearl Since we were only in Shanghai for 30 hours or so, we opted for activities that would give us an overall impression of downtown Shanghai. Since Landon loves boats, we decided to go for a little river cruise down the Huangpu river, which runs through downtown Shanghai and divides the Bund and Nanjing Rd from the Oriental Pearl tower, Lujiazui and Pudong- our hotel area. Tickets were 160 rmb for adults, and Landon was free. We opted to go with the Shanghai Huangpu River Cruise company- they operate many of the river cruises from the southern end of the Bund. Since it was a busy Saturday afternoon, there were cruises leaving every 15 minutes and we had no problem getting tickets. After hiking all the way down the Bund river walk, I discovered that there are ticket booths for this river cruise company all along the river! We aimed for 7:00 pm- late enough that the buildings would be lit up, but early enough for Landon to be awake an...

Tower from the pedestrian walkway Pearl close-up Austin had two days off in a row, so we took a quick trip to Shanghai for the weekend to see what we could see and attend church in real-life (vs. via phone). We took the high speed train from Ningbo and it took about two hours. It was nice to see the Chinese countryside in between the cities, and to visit a different part of China. We were NOT prepared for how crowded Shanghai was on the weekend. WOW. I don't think I have been around so many people in my entire life! PEOPLE EVERYWHERE! We chose to visit the Oriental Pearl tower first because it is a major landmark of Shanghai, and it had many different activities involved that I thought would be fun for everyone. Plus, it was 95 degrees outside with high humidity and I knew we did not want to be walking around too much outside until later on in the day. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt very close to the Pearl, so it was a sweltering but easy walk o...