A few hours to a month...

...well it looks like I've done it again and there's been a delay in putting up a new post! I really am very, very bad at this but I promise to change! Hopefully my brother will start to fill this out too when he's in Japan! Yep he's definitely off this month on the 25th!

So back to the holiday...so originally the plan was to go to Shanghai on a tour prior to New Year but they were all booked up! In fact most of the tours were booked up and it didn't look like we were going to go but we did find one that took place over New Year and we ended up taking it.

We arrived in Shanghai in the evening a couple of nights before New Year and we proceeded to drop our bags off on the tour bus. The tour guide and a Shanghai guide took us on the maglev train that's been built to service the airport. From what I could tell it only has a couple of stops and the service finishes early sometime in the early evening. It was an enjoyable and very quick train ride and if I recall the train did about about 300km/h but capable of more than 400km/h. We left the train at the first stop and then waited for our tour bus to arrive; which had to the usual route through traffic.

The tour bus took up to a restaurant for dinner and we were sat with other members of the tour group. The food was interesting and was typical of what we ate during the remainder of the trip; each evening meal always contained a tasty duck in chinese soup. After dinner the local guide suggested that we go to the river side to see the city lights, since it was still too early to sleep. We wanted to go, as did a few other families, but a few did not and we ended up going back to the hotel. There was not going to be another opportunity to see the evening skyline since that was our only night in Shanghai so luckily the local guide suggested taking us out using the underground system. We took him up on the offer and went out; it was a very cramped train ride in places, even worse than the tube in London! When we arrived and came back to the surface it was a neon paradise and I have to say the lighting of the buildings was quite spectacular; it was very reminiscent of Hong Kong but still very distinctive. It was cold especially since we were exposed on the promenade along the river so we were glad to be wearing warm clothes. After some photos were taken we wandered back towards to the underground station but it was decided that we'd take a taxi; which again resemble those you find in Hong Kong.

It was still not very late when we arrived back at the hotel so my brother and I and our cousin went to play some snooker! When we'd originally arrived at the hotel I'd used an information pod in the lobby to find out what was available and they had snooker, darts, a mahjong and disco areas. After an hour or two of playing snooker we were quite tired and went back to our rooms for a good nights rest...

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