My husband is the man.
We hopped the plane to Shanghai from Wuhan and arrived early in the afternoon. When we walked in the door the concierge handed me a big bundle of roses from my husband. Everyone oohed and ahed and I grinned until my face hurt. It's a day early for Valentine's, but that's a good thing. He better be taking off on Monday-- I'm gonna lock him in the bedroom for this one.
I've always made fun of people who go to foreign countries and run right to McDonalds, but I have to admit when I saw that Starbucks it was downright ridiculous how happy it made me. We all trooped in and got our expensive American coffees and then sat on the patio in a state of bliss. I'm not saying we're giving up on the food here, but it was soooooo nice to have a familiar cappuccino that it instantly made us feel better.
After that we were refreshed enough to walk down to the Bund from our hotel and take pictures of the lights that were popping on on the opposite bank. The Pearl Tower is an amazing structure, and the lights around it across the river were really cool.
We hoofed back to meet everyone for dinner at a restaurant around the corner from our hotel. Family-style, as usual, and pretty good food. One thing I've been missing this whole trip is diet soda-- at dinner they only usually have regular soda (Coke and Sprite) and beer. Needless to say I've been drinking a lot of beer-- Tsingtao, Snow Beer, Carlsburg (that one surprised me a little). More like water than beer, but still better than the alternative. At least if I'm going to get the calories, I should get something out of it, right?
Already you can hear firecrackers going off. The Lunar New Year begins on Sunday and we're going to be here to see it!
