Thursday : sunny

Lucky we set an alarm to get us up this morning, other wise we would of missed breakfast on Kim's Birthday What a breakfast too, they had everything. It was so good to have cereal and fruit. The breakfast room was very nice, it used to be a ball room. It has overhead balconies like in an opera theatre. Big domed ceiling with ledlight sections to let natural light in. Just what Kim needed for a birthday breakfast, she was happy.

After stuffing ourselves we spoke to reception about changing rooms. They said we can have a look at one after it gets cleaned up.

While we waited, we walked every hallway and took every stairway in this 160 year old hotel, which is China's oldest. Im was sure there would be secret doorways and passageways, all these old buildings have them, but didn't find any. There were so many wings in this building, it would be hard to get around if you were a new staff member. The hallways are deck out with old paintings, photos and information on the history of hotel and of Shanghai. It's had plenty of important guests, Einsteins to Charlie Chapmans even US presidents. There are five other restaurants and cafe's and it looks like they could be renovating a sixth. The reception was a cool place with it's old artwork, cafe a shops overlooking the street. It's huge timber columns and revolving doors and the bust boys in their white uniforms ever eger to help. There was this big indoor courtyard with a glass roof, it was setup like a museum, with more information about the development of Shanghai, and the firsts that this hotel was doing in China.

We went back to reception to see if the room was ready. It was, so we went to have a look. Perfect, the room was much better, we moved in right away. It is a much brighter room, there are three windows, and one is a dormer window. Instead of only having one and that was hidden down a corridor in the previous room. The ceiling was racked, with timber members showing, much roomier bathroom too. Perfect birthday room!

it was nearly midday when we left the room. We went down to a hotel bar and had a couple birthday drinks and some hot chips. We used thier wifi to locate a laundry that was close by too. The hotels laundry is too expensive for the amount of clothes that we had. The bar was cool it was an old timber bar with big comfy lounge chairs. Afterwards we got some work done at the hotels hair salon. Then I went back to reception and I bought Kim's Birthday present. They were tickets to a Chinese Acrobatic show performing tonight. They were passes though we needed to change them into tickets at the venue.

After the tidy up at the hair dressers and present giving, we went back to the room to get our dirty clothes to take to the laundry.

Of corse the laundry doesn't exist where google suggested it would be. So we started asking locals if there is one near by, and soon enough someone pointed us to a laundry.

We dropped our clothes off and found out that it wasn't much cheaper than our hotel. $70 can you believe that! It was a lot of laundry I know, but come on. I do remember reading, that laundries in Shanghai are expensive for some reason. Maybe that's why every is on the nose in China especially the French.

After the drop off we soon took a cab to go and exchange our show passes for tickets. We thought, get in early for good seats. Turns out it was too early, the ticket office was closed.

Ah well walked up the road to a cake shop we saw from the cab, and had some birthday cake and coffee. While we looked at the map to find the closest train station back into town.

We picked a station and made our way to it. We had a little trouble buying our tickets. We couldn't match up the station name on our map to the machine. When we eventually nutted it out and it was still as cheap and easy as everywhere else.

We popped out at the southern end of what is called the ( Bund ) and walked north. Passed all the old english styled buildings on our side, and all the new buildings including that weird tower on the other side of the river. We had a good slow walk back to the hotel and got cleaned up before we jumped back in a taxi to take us back to the venue for the show.

We exchanged our tickets and we were seated front and centre! Well close enough to the front five rows back. They were great seats but even better was the show. My golly gosh the tricks they were performing were awesome! So crazy and so dangerous. They had girls swinging from each others necks on roller skates, ten girls forming a human pyramid on one push bike while spinning plates on sticks. Fantastic juggling with hats and yo ho dablos. People seemed to do more walking on each others heads and performing flips than standing on the ground. It was a shame that we weren't allowed to take photos, the would of been great photos. It was an incredible show, they have traveled all over the world to perform. Glad we went.

We hopped back in a cab and went to a bar bar on the 32nd floor of the Hyatt hotel. The hotel is close to ours and over looks the bund. At night all the buildings light up, and a few buildings put on a light shows, not as many lights as HK but it still looks nice. Especially the old buildings, the chosen lighting suits the age of the buildings really well. In Shanghai too the fancy lights only turn on for four hrs, unlike HK's that run all night.

The bar had a cover charge to get in, but that was ok because that included one free drink each. It was ladies night too so Kim got two free drinks. The silly thing was that they charged people to sit a window seat. We tried to sit a vacant table got told that to sit here at this small round table on two bar stools, would cost us 500rmb $77. RightyO so we left that area and went upstairs to get some drinks, and go outside to rooftop terrace area. They had a spa up there and day beds. We didn't find out how much the beds were, there was a few empty one though. We took some photos of Shanghai at night and then went back down onto the street.

We hadn't really eaten dinner yet either. So we went back to the bund and found a bar and had a couple more drinks and ordered some food.

After our 11pm dinner and last drinks we went back to the hotel and got cleaned up then went to bed. I think I'm going to need to set the alarm again.