shanghai shuffle

We landed in Shanghai China the day before Maggie's birthday. After a cold walk around the town, we finally found the hotel we were looking for, which was nowhere close to where GoogleMaps said it was. It was our first experience in realizing that online maps of China...not very reliable.

After leaving Tokyo, were we seasoned pros at eating convenience store food, so on Maggie's birthday, our first stop was a convenience store for an early morning snack. Our first mistake was in assuming China was like any of the previous Asian countries we visited. We got some stuff out of the steamer cabinets we had seen all over Asia and headed to the shopping district of Shanghai.

We shopped for a few hours and while Maggie didn't find anything, Andrew got a new pair of shoes, which was long overdue. The amount of stares he was getting for wearing flip flops in 40 degree weather was getting a little ridiculous.

Another thing we quickly learned about China was that while both Taipei and Tokyo had similar huge numbers of people, China's "Me First" mentality made being out and about just that much more stressful. So we purchased a bottle of champagne and one of red wine and headed back to the hotel to chill out. After polishing them both off, we headed out for a Birthday Dinner. This is when we found out that subways in China close around 11:00pm and that we had time to get to the restaurant Maggie wanted to go to, but there was no way we were catching the subway back, and it wasn't close. So we found the only thing still open in our neighborhood--a little pastry shop--and bought some savory pastries. It was around this time that the steamer food from the morning started to rear up in Andrew's stomach and tell him he better get to a bathroom, and quick. So while Maggie polished off her birthday dinner, Andrew became acquainted with the toilet. Shortly after Andrew's stay in the bathroom, Maggie's stomach started to go bad.

The next two days in Shanghai went by in trips to the bathroom, Subway Restaurant and a few more short excursions to the shopping part of Shanghai because it was getting really cold and we needed appropriate clothes.

On Thanksgiving our stomachs were feeling a little better so we headed to a Western Restaurant, the Shanghai Brewing Company.

We ordered large beers and started with an order of Nachos. Little did we know they were going to be the largest Nachos we had ever come across.

After the Nachos we were felling pretty full, so we finished our Thanksgiving feast with a bowl of soup and a side salad. On the way home we were feeling quite full and both realized our Thanksgiving feast might have been too much too soon for our stomachs, so we vowed to take it easy from then on until we felt entirely better.