Sheltered in Shanghai

Our arrival in Shanghai marked the first time in the journey where we would spend 3 nights in the same bed.  This is the first hostel that actually had box springs, unfortunately that is all they had, talk about a hard bed.  The first order of business was to plug the toilet because someone put the toilet paper into it, oops.  That resulted in me resorting to the common toilet down the hall, one my way I had to navigate around a great pool of water in the middle of the passage.  I suspect someone else had localized flooding due too misplaced toilet paper.  Our last hostel gets a few more stars then this one.

When we were climbing the stairs to our room, loaded with packs and bags, we noticed the sign indicating that the air conditioning was out.  Not to fear as we would just open our window and cool off a bit that way.  We soon discovered that was not going to help.  It just opened to the adjacent hallway, weird.

On the first evening we went for a stroll down a nearby avenue and found all sorts of businesses and action.  This street had fish markets, meat markets, super markets, restaurants, shoe repair, massage, travel agencies, piano sales, street food, street junk sales, a massive Internet cafe and other assorted odds and ends.

We had a bite to eat in the hostel resaurant as food is always on the girls minds, surprise.  One of our dishes did not come out from the kitchen and when I attempted to get my money back(all food seems to be pre pay in China, at least for us) chaos broke out.  There was all kinds of loud and fast talking with the business matriarch at the helm.  It took six folks to determine that I really had not received this dish and once confirmed my money was promptly and apologetically returned.

Food in China is served as it is cooked and meals are eaten family style on a lazy Susan if the table is big enough to warrant.  Eating this way has been really fun with our group as we all have different enough tastes to order unique things from the menu, but similar enough preferences to enjoy sampling all the plates.  Here is a table shot from earlier in the trip.  For the record, those were community beers as well.

Images in 2013 Shanghai.