Shanghai: Day 3

Today we had a private tour with a fantastic guide, Cecilia, and a van driver who didn't speak, except in Mandarin to Cecilia.

We started the day with breakfast at the hotel's buffet. Mostly the same as the day before, so I won't bore you with the details. Then Cecilia met us in the lobby to start the tour. We headed over to a Buddhist temple, the most famous in Shanghai. We toured the different halls, she explained some history, culture and the significance of the different buddhas. More details to follow once I'm able to caption and upload all of the photos.

Next we headed over to the silk factory, we saw the whole process from the silkworm cocoon to the spinning process to the hand weaving techniques. We spent a ton of time on the sales floor, where the Packards bought a great new silk carpet & the rest of us got silk duvets. We'll see if silk does any better helping me sleep, since it's completely hypoallergenic and natural.

Next was lunch, pretty traditional Cantonese family style cuisine, lazy susan, loads of food. It was a great middle to the day. We followed lunch up with a trip down the new walkway on the Bund, where we had been yesterday, but were able to get a bit of history from Cecilia, as well as ask her some questions.

Walked through a market, took photos with statues along the way to the Yu Garden. According to Cecilia, you cannot say you've been to Shanghai if you haven't visited this garden. It is a great garden paradise, complete with halls, coi ponds, natural foliage and rock structures. Dragons, carvings and pagodas were very present, as well.

The final stop was planned to visit the French Concession... since the Children's Palace is closed on Mondays, but we didn't have the time since our other stops along the way were so lengthy. It was okay though, because between Seychelles and David, we got plenty of history on the lane houses and other parts of this part of town.

The final stop of the evening, after a quick wardrobe change back at the hotel, was the Passover Seder at the Millennium hotel. What an interesting experience! We were early & started out with drinks at the bar, martinis for the men, sprite for Lauren & green tea for me... headed up to the Seder in a ballroom of about 300 people. It was lead by 2 Orthodox Rabbis and was a crazy circus of unorganized chaos. I got yelled at for taking photos, since button pushing isn't allowed, and did my best to captures the moments prior to the yelling or on the sly after the fact. It was a nice time to spend the holiday with the Jews in and around Shanghai, including the Krinskys and the Packards who are all missing traditional Seders at home while we're traveling.

Like I mentioned before, more to follow with the photos, I took 322 today, before dinner, so closer to 350, now. I'll work on captioning & uploading them in the morning, but for now... off to bed.