Shanghai Shuffle

Our journey continues a'll the way east to Shanghai. In the recurring theme of this world tour, exploring the city happened after office days. And was once again accompanied by extremely good food.

Unfortunately, the journey to China was not nearly as pleasant as the one to Dubai. Suffice to say, there is one airline I will never travel again with that particular airline. But once in Shanghai, things looked up.

Luckily we had a local on our team who was more than happy to show us around. And so on our first evening, off into the night we went - exploring the old town.

We walked through never-ending streets, taking in the truly mesmerising hustle and bustle of the city. Losing track of time and distance covered, we only stopped when our stomachs wouldn't stop growling.

The next day, we managed to escape for a special lunch. Taking a cab we left the beaten tourist path and made our way to a true local joint. I couldn't tell you where we went for the life of me, but we were about to seriously stress-test our European taste buds. On our search for adventures we were about to try an original Shanghai hot pot (the medium version).

Full and happy we decided to take a stroll through the neighbourhood. A little less overwhelmed than the day before, we were truly able to enjoy our surroundings and good fortune that this was our working life.

On our final day, our local guide had one more speciality planned. After work we made our way to the City of God temple. Diving into the rich history and observing worship was a truly inspiring experience. It is humbling to be reminded that there are so many century-old cultures that we can never truly understand.

We finished the day with some souvenir shopping. This of course had to include some original Chinese green tea and some chopsticks that still remind me of my first and mighty impressive trip to Shanghai.