Shanghai daze

After several lovely days with the family in Madrid we spent a long 12 hours flying to Shanghai. A 6am arrival and 8 pm departure gave us a day on the ground so we organized a transit tour.

The first thing you notice driving in from the airport is that almost every car is electric (there was also at least one self-driving). This, it turns out, is because the government has given significant benefits to electric cars and so, surprise surprise, everyone wants one. The second thing we noticed was that it was pouring with rain.

We started the tour at the Jade Buddha temple where we learnt a lot about Buddhism, Chinese-style. It was a surprise to discover the government not only tolerates, but supports, Bhuddism.

The rain mutated our second stop into a museum (really that was third, coffee was second). Then it was off to the Yuan Garden – a classic Chinese, well, garden. It was slightly disappointing because it’s been around for centuries and I think they got better at designing and building gardens over time.

That took us to lunch at the famous soup dumpling house. The soup dumplings were fabulously tasty and, inevitably, messy.

Then it was wandering the French Concession with its old shop houses.

Finally we visited the Bund before a close-to-collapsing Jennifer and I caught the maglev train back out to the airport.