Shanghai First Night

For my Lunar New Year Holiday I went to Shanghai. I'm not going to say much about it, because it was a pretty lousy weekend, but I'll give you some pictures and videos over the next couple entries. I had been sick with some sort of flu since the Wednesday before, and even had to take my first sick day at Kate LA the day before I left, just so I could rest up enough to possibly be well enough to enjoy my weekend. Although I did get well enough to not alarm anyone at the airports (which I was EXTREMELY nervous about), I did not have a nice time in Shanghai, particularly since the first thing that happened to me was I got ripped off royally on the taxi fare home, since it was a major holiday, I assume.

I stayed at the Everbright Hotel, which has an exhibition hall and is popular with business travelers. It also has a pool, which I paid for a more expensive hotel for, then I found out charged a fee for use of the pool and athletic facilities, and I couldn't even use the stupid pool anyway, because I was too sick. What a waste. Otherwise, the hotel would have been totally nice, except it didn't have A SINGLE CLOCK ANYWHERE IN THE WHOLE PLACE. That really bothered me, as I had to use my cell phone to czech the time (my watch band broke recently), and my cell phone put me in the wrong stupid time zone. I also didn't have my charger, so I was afraid it'd run out of battery the whole time.

Because of the whole time issue, I was waiting an hour early in the lobby for my tour van to pick me up, and had tried to call them before the scheduled time to see why they were late. Luckily, n one picked up when I called.

Night exterior:




My room:


It was freezing in that damn room all night, as nice as it was. I wish they'd turned the heat on before I'd arrived.



It being the eve of one of the biggest holidays of the year, there were major celebrations going all night long. The fireworks started off like this:


But as midnight approached, began to look like this:


They continued strong until about 2am, and then kept going lightly until about 4am, then only sporadically throughout the morning and all the next day. I would know, as the medication I was taking for my sickness kept me up all night (I hadn't slept in days).

I stayed in the room all the first night to rest, so I would be strong enough to endure, or even enjoy, the city tour I had scheduled the next day.