24 Hours in Shanghai

Last Monday, I went to Shanghai for 24 hours to celebrate a friend's birthday and see Shanghai for the first time.
We got into Shanghai at about 9pm. We checked into our Airbnb and then headed into the center to see the Bund.

This was something I really wanted to see in Shanghai, so I'm glad we went (actually, we went twice). It's really impressive in person. It made me really feel like I was in Shanghai.

That evening we stayed up late eating junk food and watching reality TV (in Chinese, of course).

The next morning, we went to Yu Garden. It's a huge market with architecture that looks like ancient Chinese architecture, but I think it's all recently done. We walked around the little streets and eventually got something to eat.

Next we went to the City God Temple, which is in this area.

Lisa was explaining a bit about the different gods and the culture of Taoism. We made the all-important stop to pray to the god that helps you find "Mr. Right," as she put it. The god's name is 月老.

After the temple, we wandered around and stumbled on the old street (上海老街). We shopped around a bit and admired the old streets, filled with locals.

Since we were right on the Bund, we walked back there. Our plan was to walk around the French Concession, but the weather was so nice, we decided to go up one of the tall buildings and watch the sunset from the top. We took the ferry across the river, which I would highly recommend. It's 2 RMB, which is about $ 0.30. You get a really cool view of both skylines.

We bought tickets online while we were on the ferry and then rushed to get up before golden hour.

the view from the inside!

It was such a cool view from the top, so we ended up having a bit of a photoshoot.

We stayed until pretty much the last minute, then we went to go grab our luggage and headed to the train station. It was a whirlwind of a trip, but I'm glad I finally have a sense of Shanghai. I'm really excited to go back many times over the course of the year and explore it a bit more.