Mmmmmmm M on the Bund!
I had:
Starter - artichoke with parmesan, tomato n mozz, aubergine rolled with yummy tapenade-y filling.
Main - Iranian dish 'fit for a Queen' - veggie kebob (sic), jewelled rice, beetroot and pomegranate filo parcels (nicest thing, really delicious), Iranian bread and some other nice veggie things that have already escaped me, given how full my memory banks are currently running.
Dessert - a huge slice of Pavlova, much to Andy and Nic's chagrin as they had gone for choccy plates, which were much smaller. Size does matter.
After dinner we decided to nip over the road to the other really posh restaurant in Shanghai - Jean Georges at Three on the Bund, super swanky and not at all veggie, with a fashionistas-trying-too-hard bar. So having checked out the menu, we disappeared back to Glamour Bar for cocktails for them and Pedro Ximenez for me. Heaven.
We also took advantage of our temporary and entirely illusory wealth to wander around especially onto the roof terrace and admire the classical colonial architecture of the Bund at night and the gaudy Pudong neon across the river from one of the best vantage points. Although everyone was terribly nice to us, here and at the swanky hotel, I did have a constant feeling of 'we're going to get found out!'.
Although Andy was really excited he forgot to say in his article that when we went to collect Nic from the airport we went by Maglev, covering 30km in 8 minutes. The display told us we were going at 431kph. No, they don't have enough things to hang on to.
While I'm at the 'scary things I have done in China' bit, I will mention that our hotel in Shanghai was the 4 highest building around, and in the interests of visiting Nepal, I accompanied Andy and Nic up to the bar on the 65th floor for a nosy. After some reasonably well controlled panicking, they agreed to bring me down again to the relative normality of our room on the 31st floor. As Andy said - at a certain height, waitresses and air hostesses begin to look the same.
Shanghai Museum was excellent, only suffering slightly from coming relatively hot on the heels of the equally good Xi'an Museum. As we were pushed for time I did a highly personalised tour of the early bronzes, the early jade and the minority nationalities galleries. All very fascinating, especially the bronzes, although there are only so many 'ding', 'gong' and 'zun' that a girl can take at once.
Although the world heritage designated gardens in Suzhou were good, they were such a different style to English gardens. The Chinese classical garden is all intimate courtyards and walkways full of big holey stones and small trees in between pavillions of 'distant fragrance' or 'reflecting pagoda' that we came to the conclusion that any Chinese visiting, say, a Capability Brown effort in the UK, would be at a total loss, and stare around thinking "This is soooo boring, it's just grass with a few trees."
After the biggest breakfast buffet ever (I had scrambled eggs, grilled toms, hash browns, pain au chocolat, brioche, and fresh fruit, including rambutan and dragonfruit with blueberry yogurt and almonds, but I could easily have had bircher muesli and prunes, followed by sushi, smoked salmon omelette, emmenthal and brie, Chinese dumplings, and pancakes or muffins to finish off.) we went off the Pudong via the tourist tunnel, and then abandoned Andy and grabbed a taxi to Yuyuan market for a spot of shopping. Except we spent about 10 minutes in the tourist corral of Yuyuan before heading to the nearby local market to rummage for bargains.
We 'just happened' to bump into Andy in the expensive cake shop in the bottom of our hotel building (the hotel started on the 9th floor I think) buying goodies for the 29 hour train journey, and so supplied set off for Yichang on our way to the 3 gorges.
Current book: Just finished Last Secrets of the Silk Road by Alexandra Tolstoy **/***** Useful background reading, but some obviously tough, capable women come out seeming very young and self-centred. Am currently reading all the UK newspapers Nic kindly lugged out with her.
