Shanghai Skyline at Night

From a visit to The Bund.  We were admiring the skyline when all of a sudden a giant, lit up pirate ship sailed by.  Ha!

Downtown Shanghai

One day in Shanghai we visited the current tallest skyscraper, the building pictured above which has a top that kind of looks like a bottle opener (hehe).  That strip at the very top, across the hole, is a glass walkway.  The first photo is a picture of the inside.  Isn't it cool?  And the floor also has panes of glass in it to walk across - eeps!  I thought I might be kind of nervous walking around it because I'm a little uncomfortable with heights, and I did feel a little flutter in my stomach when I first stepped super close to the windows, but overall the view was so cool that I got distracted looking at everything and forgot my butterflies.  After we left, I skipped visiting a temple with the group to walk around downtown, I guess what would be considered the business district, for a bit.  It actually reminded me of Chicago in some ways; the architecture is really cool and it has a garden area in the middle of all the skyscrapers (nothing compared to Millenium Park, though).  I strolled along an elevated walkway past all the buildings, and stopped in the park to take it all in and enjoy the weather, which was beautiful that day.  Pretty awesome afternoon! 

PS:  To get to the observation deck of the skyscraper, we had to take a couple elevator and escalator rides. The main elevator had these futuristic lights and music playing; it kind of reminded everyone of Charlie and Chocolate Factory :)  Here is a quick video of part of the ride:

Riding a Rickshaw

On the last day in China, we took a little tour around on a rickshaw!  It was through a cool part of town with lots of bars and shops.  They paired us up and whisked us off, and we were dropped off in a neighborhood that had streets so narrow you could only walk in them, where families welcomed us into their homes and served us an amazing home cooked meal.  Probably the best meal of the trip!  This video goes on for a bit because I was trying to catch a moment when the rickshaw drivers/rider would purposely hit each other - it was basically bumper cars, rickshaw edition.  They were cute; laughing a lot and yelling at each other.  The streets were so crowded!  I can't believe we didn't seem more accidents...

China!

I returned home from the China tour with my university orchestra not too long ago, and have since recovered from jet lag, packed up my apartment in Lexington for the summer, and gradually worked my way home to Wisconsin after making stops in Indiana, Chicago, finally arriving in La Crosse, and then took a quick trip to Madison for the past couple of days to fill in for a cello section in need of subs for a concert.  Whew!  China was a really cool trip!  It's fascinating to see a place that operates so differently from our own country.  There were definitely some highlights in the tour, including visiting the Great Wall and exploring Shanghai.  I've started looking through the photos that everyone on the trip is sharing, and these are some of my favorites so far.  That's me in the nook of the Great Wall!  Wow that was such a beautiful scene.  The top is from a visit to a famous garden, and the bottom the Shanghai skyline on a hazy (slightly polluted?) morning.  I am excited to share more photos and stories!

Take care everyone!
xomo

Dusting off my Passport!

Other big things are happening, too!  It's been 2 years since I was last out of the country (I cannot believe it's been that long!  Seems like just yesterday.), and now my severe wanderlust is being satisfied this summer - I'm leaving for China in a week!  My university's orchestra is going on tour, and we're headed to Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin.  We just received our itinerary, and besides performances, it includes visits to gardens, museums, temples, a boat ride, an acrobatic show, riding on the bullet train, and seeing the Great Wall, Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square...the list goes on.  It sounds like it will be a very packed trip.  I'm pretty excited because I don't think I would have thought to put China at the top of my list of travel destinations anytime soon, and I don't know if I'd feel comfortable just heading over on my own for a visit, so this will be a great way to get a first taste.  I was talking to my dad, and he said that's how he felt about going behind the Iron Curtain when it was still the Iron Curtain; he went on tour with his school choir, and that was the best way to do it.  And then he said that there was one slightly sketchy part of the trip where he and his friend went off to Budapest for the day on their own and exchanged currency on the black market, "but everything worked out well."  Whaaattt??  Crazy.  You learn something new every day.  Anyway I can't wait!  Also, more travel news coming up soon...

~xomo

ps:  photo from the window of my friend's flat in Paris, where he graciously took me in for a week when I visited a couple years ago :)