we left our hearts in shanghai

the morning after we got back from china, AWD announced that he was going to start looking for jobs in shanghai. and that sounded just fine to me. we completely fell in love with the city; it was by far our favorite stop of the trip.

there is something about cities that makes me feel at home. cities just make sense to me. i know how to get around in a city, i know how to find what i am looking for. i dig cities and i feel at home in them, and shanghai was one of those cities with a vibe that makes you feel at home right away. we got ourselves three-day subway passes, packed our map and we were good to go. we probably could have spent our whole trip there, honestly.

so, in summary, we love shanghai!

our hotel was right at the top of an area of old colonial buildings called the bund. and across the harbor was the ultra-modern skyline of the new pudong area. we took a nighttime stroll on the bund every evening, and it was a delight.

we were also really close to nanjing road, the times square of shanghai. in addition to being famous for its neon and it shopping, it's also home to any variety of street performers, including public karaoke, ballroom dancing couples and teenagers dressed up in panda suits dancing to chinese pop music. in other words, endless entertainment.

nanjing road is also the place to go if you want to be scammed into buying knock-off products. don't worry about finding them. they'll find you. just follow the people who sidle up to you and say, "hey lady. purse? watch? ipod? ipad?" we refrained, but if you give it a try let us know how it goes.

illegal knock-offs aside, shanghai is an excellent place for shopping. we got our haggle on at the dongtai lu antiques market, and did some non-haggle shopping as well. we strolled through a neighborhood where old tenement houses have been turned into shops, and we visited an artisan market tucked into winding alleys and old buildings.

we visited sun yat-sen's house, and spent a little while relaxing in fuxing park, where the locals go to fly kites, practice their ballroom dancing (it's everywhere!) and play mahjong and chinese checkers.

we ate the most delicious (fried!) dumplings you could ever imagine having in your entire life. we liked them so much we went back two days in a row. and our only regret was that we didn't discover them sooner so we could have gone every single day we were there.

we went to a propaganda poster art museum, and walked past the building where the communist party of china was formed.

we rode an elevator 474 meters up to the highest observatory in the world.

and we rode the world's first commercially operating magnetic levitation train (the maglev), which goes up to 400 kilometers on hour, though it only got up to 301 km/h for our ride.

we also took a morning stroll through yu yuan garden.

and an afternoon stroll around the confucius temple.

and at the end of it all, we felt pretty much like this.

which is probably how you feel, too, after reading this long, long post.