Tuesday 14 October

Well, we've been up the Pearl Tower, used sharp elbows and cross (err, very rude) words to stop people just barging past in the queue for the lift down, been to the History Museum (excellent, but how Shanghai has changed over the last hundred years - or more likely the last 10 years), been to Txiantandi (sp?) which is a reconstructed area of shanty courtyard houses, but now loads of outdoor tourist restaurants - looked round a reconstructed house - which in the original would have been a horrible squalid slum, but is now furnished with 'antiques' and looks rather sumptuous - then ate at one of the ultra-modern restaurants (though Ray saw a rat running along the top of a window of the restaurant opposite ... ) Our food was fabulous. Is it better to know about the rat going into the kitchen, and eat there nonetheless, or to be ignorant of any wildlife where we were and eat happily? We had champagne (is this a habit?) and a cocktail and a glass of chardonnay, and I got lightly pissed.

Then we went through the pedestrian tunnel, via toy electric train, from the Puxi to the Pudong side of the Huangpu. Obviously a little train for kids, but the Japanese group and one of the English women loved all the flashing lights and running over the inflatable people on the line ...!!!

Then the usual death-by-taxi drive back to the apartment, where the driver is a maniac, goes the longest way round and ignores repeated cries of 'mandian!!!' (slowly!!!) from the back seat.