Tale of Two Cities

Some photos from our long weekend in Shanghai earlier this month. I just love the contrast of new and old!

"Old Street" - we spent a few hours exploring the cheap souvenirs and fake antiques, and actually ended up buying a painting.

Pudong

The Bund

After melting for a day and a half the humidity suddenly disappeared! And just like that Fall is here! Yes!

Nanjing Donglu--THE shopping street. I'll have to come back without Brian!

Newly renovated Buddhist temple sandwiched among skyscrapers

Fung Wah is Child's Play

I can now look back fondly at my time spent on the Fung Wah Chinatown bus that runs between Boston and New York. Turns out it was the universe's very gentle way of preparing me for the actual China town bus.

Both Fung Wah and the Jiangyin long distance buses are crowded and cheap. And yes, Fung Wah offered the titillating hint of danger with the occasional roadside fire. But they totally assuage any concerns as you board the bus by passing out quarters and the phone number for customer service, asking that you return the quarter at the end of the trip if you are satisfied.

And then there is the actual Chinese bus. The bus for the relatively short 2-1/2 hour ride from Jiangyin to Shanghai:

• will have people spitting and hacking up lungs on the floor
• will have multiple people using their cellphones as ghetto blasters
• will likely have a driver employing the Chinese 5-seconds-on-the-gas-5-seconds-coast lurch method
• will stop randomly on the side of the freeway to pick up 'black market' fares that the driver will pocket directly
• will take an off-ramp to pick up more black market fares then perform a u-turn on said off-ramp while honking as if everyone else is in the wrong as it reenters the freeway
• will not have working A/C in 90+ heat and humidity
• will have heaters that are not only stuck on in 90+ heat and humidity, but will have floorboard heaters that singe your legs the entire trip
• will teach you that you can sit still and yet sweat thru everything you are wearing, leaving a little puddle of sweat in your seat that makes you feel oh-so-feminine and dainty
• will make stepping off the bus into 90+ heat and humidity in Shanghai feel refreshing
• will make Leslie run to the hotel and spend the first hour watching movies from here

Heaven.

After I sufficiently lowered my body temperature we ventured back out in to the heat to our favorite hamburger haunt, wandered town and spotted Waldo! All those years honing my eye in the orthodontist's waiting room finally paid off!

A masculine twist on Waldo's iconic look

Bad Moon Rising

Here in China the Moon Festival celebrates the end of the fall harvest. This year it falls on September 12. We've been gifted a few boxes of the traditional mooncakes and have actually been brave enough to to try them. Traditionally the cakes are filled with a lotus seed paste with a salted egg yolk at the center to symbolize the moon. Doesn't that sound delish? In reality there are tons of different fillings, so it's usually a mystery when you take the first bite. I've had a sweet one with a yolk at the center that was tolerable. A co-worker told Brian this particular box should be a savory filling with whiskey so we opened it up for dessert last night and nervously took the first bite.

BIG mistake. It reeked of fish sauce gone bad. Brian compared it to cat food. Obviously, it went straight to the trash and we gargled with turpentine. Perhaps the instructions on the desiccant packet were also meant to apply to the cakes? We still have two family size mooncakes waiting to be opened, and I just don't know if we're brave enough.

Next year, I'm so putting in a request for these full mooncakes from Goods of Desire in Hong Kong!

Mai Thai Dreaming

I should come back as a travel agent in my next life. I've only just finished posting our Australia photos, we're debating where to go for the coming three-day weekend, we're leaving for the States in 8 weeks, and we just booked THIS for a week of diving in Thailand in March. We're still waffling on whether to spend the other half of our month off in the Philippines or Vietnam. Poor us, I know. Living in China does have its benefits I suppose!

Last stop, Melbourne!

We loved, I mean really LOVED Melbourne. If CSL decided to open an office in Melbourne and asked us to make the move, well, I might have started packing yesterday.

But seriously, what a fantastic city. We've both been lucky enough to zigzag around the world and we agree it was the prettiest city we've ever been too. And I don't think this is just China skewing our perception. New and old architecture just seemed to work perfectly together. It's a fantastic walking city, has a very international feel to it, with gorgeous green parks and a bustling waterfront.

We squeezed a lot in to our last few days:

• Melbourne Aquarium--was really expensive and not nearly as nice as the New England Aquarium 

• National Gallery of Victoria--Vienna: Art and Design Secession exhibit. For the most part I really enjoyed getting to reminisce. The secessionists were all about making everyday, functional items into art. Brian was just excited to realize that one day, he too could have his tool chest on display in a museum if he just paints it creatively.

• Lost and found our passports. Thank goodness we came back to the same hotel after spending 3 days on the Great Ocean Road! But why on earth did they not call us to tell us they had them? We didn't realize we'd lost them until we checked back in!

• Managed to find a decent amount of summer clothes that actually fit us in the middle of Australia's (incredibly mild) winter. Everyone else was all bundled up in pea coats and scarves. We were loving it in t-shirts and windbreakers.

• Reunited with Costco. Purchased 2 liters of maple syrup for Brian, toothpaste and other essentials we can't find/don't trust in China.

• Melbourne Museum--National Geographic King Tut exhibit. Talk about HORRIBLE crowd management. We were like cattle being herded through the exhibit. Was not enjoyable at all because of it. Plus, all the ads for the exhibit showed King Tut's sarcophagus. It wasn't there. I know Egypt keeps a tight grip on it's treasures, but they didn't even have a replica on display. Just an outline on the floor of how big it would be.

• After reading/seeing 3 interviews in which Andrew's in Melbourne is declared the best burger in all of Australia, we made the trip only to be served up pretty average burgers. We've come to the conclusion that Australia is lagging fair bit behind in the beer and burger categories. Dad, don't ever brew a licorice stout.

• Got a brief reminder of home when walking thru Melbourne's (way too clean) Chinatown and a young boy walks out of a restaurant with a bucket of steaming sludge and pours it into the public trash can on the sidewalk.

Yarra River

View from atop the Royal Botanic Gardens

Shrine of Remembrance war memorial

Waterfront

Royal Exhibition Hall

Federation Square with Flinders Station in background

Flinders Station

Federation Square

Essential souvenirs you can't find in China.

And how could you not love a city that sells sneakers like these? Bri says it looks like I beat up Richard Simmons for his shoes. I call them my Rainbow Brite shoes and insisted they make me smile so much, they'll inspire me to be better about my exercise routine. I wear them all the time, but P.S., they haven't.

Love at first sight.

Our month in Australia ended with the perfect finale--fireworks over the harbor.

Grand Farewell

Great Ocean Road

So next stop was Melbourne with a side trip on the Great Ocean Road, which hugs Australia's southern coast. And boy was it beautiful! Roughly a 440 mile round trip, you can take a tour bus and do the entire trip in a marathon 10 hours and have 30 seconds to click a photo at predesignated stops. We opted make Apollo Bay our base and  take 3 days so we could explore all the darling beach towns and take way too many photos of each increasingly impressive viewpoint. 

Apollo Bay

Apollo Bay

Split Point Lighthouse - "The White Queen"

A placard at the lighthouse said in the early 1900s the keeper didn't see why his duties should deprive him of a social life. So he scratched a small hole in the black paint on the back of the lantern, which prevents the light from shining inland. The keeper scratched the hole to line up with the town's pub so that he was able to imbibe and yet still know that all was well back at the lighthouse. I like his thinkin'!

What I imagine Ireland to look like--wasn't expecting this in Australia! Was so beautiful!

Mait's Rest--a gorgeous trail thru the Great Otway rainforest.

Great Otway was very different from the tropical Daintree, and we just loved it. Made up mostly of beech and eucalyptus, it was absolutely stunning. It was misty, so quiet and the air so crisp. It may have been our favorite part of the entire Great Ocean Road.

Convoy Australian style

Another highlight of the drive--koalas in the wild! There were about 10 or so along the road.

This one has a baby!

Have to include a wild kookaburra sighting!

Main attraction of the Great Ocean Road, the 12 Apostles.  Reminded me of Cannon Beach.

View from Apostle Whey Cheese. Cute owners, so-so cheese

Pulling back into Apollo Bay