“Welcome to Shanghai. Would you like a purse?”

After an entire day of traveling (flight delays, missing passports, overweight luggage, buses, cars, planes) we made it to Shanghai, to the smugly decorated western Galaxy Hotel. After a good night’s sleep in a room we eventually deemed NOT to be haunted by spirits, a morning trip to the gym that cost 40RMB ($5.50?) and a hearty western-style breakfast, Alexis and I made our way to the local metro stop, about a ten minute walk away, where we surprisingly effortlessly found our way into the heart of Shanghai…Renminbi park (People’s Square). The ride cost us about $0.60 and well worth the twenty minutes in the unexpectedly clean subway.

Downtown, in the heart of Shanghai, everything is…well, relative to what we’d seen so far…big. Twelve story department stores boasting hundreds of shops with designers from all around the world, restaurants, coffee shops, electronics, etc. We made our way to a Starbucks where we screamed at the sight of “42nd Street” postcards and little bookmarks (Starbucks is one of our sponsors in China and apparently holds raffles for tickets at every store in Shanghai). We did a little dance for the baristas who feigned amusement and tried unsuccessfully to find our picture on the postcards, then made our way back to street level with our iced coffees and already damp clothing.

I am personally not a fan of Times Square, but being a tourist, with my camera out constantly, I was able to put up with the hustle and bustle of walking down the main strip here in Shanghai. We tried the side streets, packed with hundreds of bicycles, and after seeing a man literally scooping ‘sewage’ our of a pothole in the middle of the street with a ten foot long….spoon…we decided to go back to the main street and put up with the thousands of people, half of which seemed to be trying to sell us fake purses, shoes, and DVDs. At first we avoided their pleas, and even made it into a “Superman” store where I bought an adorable polo…but eventually we gave in to one persistent woman (Lily) who took us into a back alleyway, down a footpath, and to a thick black door, beyond which was a tiny little windowless shop packed with knockoff purses and other phony accoutrement. No sooner had we picked up a few Gucci bags did another slew of about seven 42nd Street cast members come blustering into the shop. A few purses were bought, no one died, per-diems were getting smaller by the minute, and we were now Lily’s new best friends!

Eventually we made it down to the Huangpu river where we could look across and see Pudong, the “special economic zone” that boasts the gigantic needle of a TV tower with a bar overlooking all of Shanghai. The river was nice, but we were starving and started back towards the strip to find a place to eat. The moment we decided to try a restaurant, out popped Lily, our new best bag lady friend, who recommended a good Italian place to us. I felt strange eating Italian food in Shanghai, but we were the ONLY non-locals there, and once we got a Hawaiian and a thai curry pizza and a few glasses of wine, all worries seemed to disappear.

Another hour or so of walking around and we were utterly exhausted, so we headed back to hotel. I still hadn’t had my fill, apparently, so I bought four DVDs on the side of the road for about $2.50. One seems to work perfect, one is in English with Russian subtitles and menus, a third is a complete bootleg from the theatre, and the fourth isn’t even recognized by my computer. Two and a half DVDs for 20RMB…can’t beat that!