Nihao Shanghai

A street in Old City

We arrived in Shanghai after a long and almost sleepless flight. Sunshine was not too keen on sleeping as there were too many new things around and he had a cough and a cold to boot. A fellow passenger offered some medicine to calm him down and help him sleep better. At first I refused but he said that it was prescribed by his children's paediatrician as he was travelling alone with his 2 year old and 8 month old. We took it from him and started to give it to Sunshine, but thought the better of it and threw it away. Were we being paranoid or sensible parents? Thankfully DH's magic touch worked and Sunshine went to sleep after a little rocking although he had a restless sleep.

The Airport was impressive - nothing flashy there, but everything works like a well oiled machine. No long queues anywhere, officials help families with young children and disabled people to get to the fast track immigration counters and pretty much everything is automated. The maglev (the train from airport to the city) was FAST, attaining a top speed of 431 km/hr in a short 10 minute journey. As soon as we checked in, we played Holi with some turmeric and vermilion and had gulab jamuns. Then, we called our families in India to wish them. We had an early dinner with DH's colleague (DH is here on business; sunshine and I just piled on). I had vegetable volcano noodles which had chicken in it. :) It was delicious, but thank God I am not vegetarian. In the hotel, everyone speaks English, but in the restaurant that we went to, we had to resort to pointing at the menu. Sunshine made a mess there, as he does whenever we eat out, but they didn't seem to mind.

Back at the hotel, we activated the wifi and I got down to my usual internet activities - checking mail, Facebook etc only to realise that FB does not work in China. A few websites that do not work here are FB, Twitter, Blogger. So I decided to just type my posts and post them once I am back in Germany.

Sunshine was experiencing some serious jet lag - there is a 7 hour difference between Shanghai and Germany. After sleeping a couple of hours of what was probably his afternoon nap, he got up with a very playful mood at 10 in the night.  DH in the meantime got hunger pangs - so we set out at 1 in the morning to tire out Sunshine and to find something for DH to eat. Finally we all slept at 3.30 and poor DH has a long day at work today.

Sunshine is fast asleep now. I hope he catches up on some sleep and adjusts to the new timezone soon because it is the weekend tomorrow and we want to explore Shanghai.