This might seem like an odd side-step here to end up in Shanghai of all places, but initially we had planned to do a quick trip to Czechia and Austria. However, a certain head of state and his friends decided to attack another country, basically closing off flights through the UAE, where we had a changeover.

Given we both had limited scope for holiday dates, we looked around for somewhere in Asia and it was decided to give Shanghai a chance since neither of us had been there before.

We got a cheap flight on Juneyao Air for the three hours the journey would take. Sure, it left at insane ‘o clock in the morning, but we definitely slept on the plane, and got through Shanghai’s Pudong airport quickly since it was pretty much empty.

Day 1

A very nice BYD taxi took us into the city to our hotel, and as I was to discover during the five days, most of the cars and motorcycles in Shanghai are electric.

It was still dark and raining on that first ride in, meaning you get that old Bladerunner vibe which used to be associated with Tokyo in the 1980s, but certainly the neon colours and skyline draped in the mist and rain means that Shanghai has certainly joined that group.

It was very, very early when we arrived at the hotel yet a few other guests were already there, but from the staff’s calm demeanour, it seemed acceptable to just rest and sleep in the lobby, so that’s what we did.

At a more reasonable hour we went across the road to the Family Mart to get something to drink. Ah Famima; no Famichiki, but it still looked and feels very familiar. An odd way to start a Shanghai trip with a Japanese conbini?

We then walked into the main city, and specifically the old town, which took us about fifteen minutes and was essentially down a main toad. We were to find it was usually very touristy, but when we arrived at 9am it was empty and only a few places were actually open, so we stopped in to have a quick bite to eat and a cup of coffee at a cafe.

Interacting with shops even a few hours that morning in confirmed some of the basic research we’d had time to do before we arrived: don’t expect anywhere to take VISA or MasterCard and make sure you have AliPay or another local payment system set up - which we had. And cash. Always cash.

Even though it was lightly raining we got to have a very nice walk around and take in some of the place and start learning a few things. Practical things, like very few cafes and restaurants have toilets, so if you need to go, you need to know where the public toilets are. There’s an app for that.

I also got to see the very cool portable Police boxes which I spotted in a few locations, but sadly never saw them being moved.

Eventually, we started to see food shops opening so we got some snacks. It all smelled, looked and tasted very good.

After lunch we went back to the hotel to actually check-in and have a rest, before heading out again to see the old town by night. They’ve done a great job with LED and scan lighting and it looked spectacular, especially in the rain and mist, and matched the rest of the night vistas we’d seen.

For dinner we found a well reviewed hinabe restaurant, or at least that’s the Japanese name for it. I think in Mandarin it’s ‘huǒguō’ (?)).

Basically, you cook your own meat in a split heated bowl with a different soup in each side. We had a mild soup in one side and a raging pepper filled red soup in the other. This was off the tourist track, but the staff were so helpful, showing us what sauces went with what, how the salad bar worked - everyone was really patient and helpful.

We also took a walk down to the Bund, which has a lot of larger European style buildings and has the view across the river to the business district - all the modern skyscrapers with massive LED lighting on them. Neon has truly been replaced with LEDs in the new BladeRunner. The rain and low cloud certainly added to the effect.

Day 2

Something different on day 2; my travel partner had booked a traditional Chinese costume photo shoot for around the old town, including the Yu rock garden which was on the to-do list. The first task was to find the company first since all this was arranged via Instagram. There’s a lot of IG in China.

We found the building - more of a gated group of residential apartments - but we had arrived a bit early and found again that the only places to sit down and have some refreshment was a Starbucks over the road, so we sat and chatted, waiting for the place to open, watching people come in, relax and then head off to work or whatever. Like any coffee-shop anywhere.

Inside the apartment building was an interesting contrast - dangling cables to LCD screens everywhere, often showing adverts, facial recognition cameras required to get in. It was kind of retro-communism meets near future.

On the floor we wanted it seemed like most of the rooms were vacant, and even when we found the right door we couldn’t hear anything until they opened the door and it looked like any other place of business, with a crowd of staff sorting out costumes, make-up and making sure bags didn’t get lost. I got talking to a family from Singapore who seemed to be loving Shanghai.

Eventually we were all ready, so with the photographer, we headed out into the old town. The photog was a real pro, handling posing, shooting and managing the crowds of a public tourist spot almost effortlessly, and he was incredibly friendly and polite too. We must have walked around for well over an hour.

During one longer posing location I got talking to a chap from India who had brought an old 3D Fujifilm camera which I’d never seen before and we had a chat before we both had to move on.

Eventually we arrived back at the business apartment for the reverse transformation and the whirlwind was done.Even the initial photos looked really good, and they were skimping on the number you got either. It’s not my normal travel thing to do, but I’m glad we did, otherwise I’d have never seen it, and it was something of an experience.

We then walked to a place called the The Refinery for lunch, which was actually in the wrong place on the TripAdvisor listing, but correct on the Google map for a change. We were already learning that non-Chinese ’tourist’ maps may or may not be right. Sometimes we took an average guess across multiple apps.

The Refinery was a nice international place in a cluster of seemingly expat, but not wholly tourist focussed shops and restaurants, along with a building which had a full Lays crisps building facia. It seemed like another style in the city to take in.

After that we walked about some just normal streets, some normal shopping centres, and just soaked up normal Shanghai. Road signs telling drivers not to use their hooters, small sushi shops, small vegetable supermarkets. Normal city things.

Of course, I’m looking at motorbikes, which are mostly scooters. I mentioned that most (all?) were electric, but some looked to have been retrofitted. You could see where an engine had been removed, and the motor and batteries shoe-horned in.

Many were wrapped in crash-bars and the kind of mods frequently seen on working bikes, as they adapt and evolve to their life’s work just like tools such as a 1980s public telephone. Hardened by their environment.

Finally we stopped in at a franchised restaurant and tried mabou dofu and other more ‘Chinese’ food, had a beer and relaxed. The place was busy but again the staff really helped with advice on portions.

After this we went to the Jazz and Blues bar I’d noticed a couple of doors down, and we listened to some live music whilst trying some of their signature cocktails. It was great; I’m a big live music fan. Everywhere you go I suspect there’s some live music in some bar, and you should always take the time to watch and listen. Certainly not the cheapest jazz bar I’ve been too, but the ensemble bad were great, staff were very good and the drinks went down pretty well.

Day 3

And now for something completely different.

We got a taxi to Shanghai Disneyland. I’m not a Disney fan, but I was kind of curious, and as you’d expect the whole thing runs like clockwork, is clean and looks exactly like the other Disneyland’s I’ve been to.

We discovered that the hot place was go was Zootopia land and that people are so busy on social media that ride queues weren’t bad at all. We went on some rides which were clearly newer upgrades of ride we’d done in Tokyo, like Pirates of the Caribbean, which had been overhauled with massive background screens and CG to augment the live action components.

The best ride though was the Tron light cycles. Sitting on a sports-bike style seat, clamped in, and then accelerating in and outside of the neon style building was great. Would ride again; and again; and again.

Also, the rapids ride was as wet as advertised, of which I approve.

As expected then, it’s a Disneyland. They’re fun, they look great and they’re efficiently run.

Ironically, we started heading back to the hotel as it started raining, so our timing was on form, but by the time we got back the rain was still going and we were tired so we did the thing. The thing I don’t like doing even in places I live. We did the McDonald’s since we were hungry, it was raining and we were passing it.

I did insist on trying something only on the local menu though - a cheese burger with local spiced sauce and two pork sausages on top of the patty. It was quite good for McDonald’s, so I felt like I hadn’t sold out too badly.

Day 4

So today we finally got to do a couple of things on my list - starting with riding the underground train system. First thing: you have to put bags through a scanner to access the platform area. OK, a bit odd but since it was now the weekend, there weren’t many people. One upside though was that the ticket machines were incredibly easy - not just because you could have an English UI, the lines have numbers, and the screen gives you a summary of duration, where to change, and how long to your change. As a bonus it was was relatively cheap, and the trains and stations were clean and well managed.

I’m a fan of public transport anywhere, either for environmental reasons, or because you get a cheap view of a city - the view the people there get.

We took a short train to the People’s Park which was picturesque and relaxing and then went looking for a hotel which allegedly did a buffet breakfast which had great reviews, but when we arrived the price was a lot more than social media portrayed and for some reason my AliPay didn’t want to work for the first time of the trip, so we took the hint and looked for somewhere else, which ended up being the Starbucks flagship Reserve, which is a huge multi-floor Starbucks with a full breakfast set, bakery, and as you might imagine, a roastery.

We almost missed it as one map had it a further 300m down the road when we were waiting at some traffic lights and noticed it just behind us!

The breakfast was excellent - egg and ham croissants, with fresh fruit, yoghurt and I had a fruit tea. A very nice brunch.

After a look around the area we took the train out to the Zhujiajiao water town, which is an area of shops and houses around a group of rivers and canals. It was crowded but had a fun vibe given it’s very much a tourist area and we even had a street portrait done, which was a fun experience as the artist had decided I looked something like KFC’s Colonel Sanders. No one has ever made that comparison before!

There was some great looking and smelling street food but unfortunately we weren’t that hungry. There were also a lot of franchised shops on the periphery but we decided we’d done that today at Starbies, and headed down some side streets and found a quiet tea shop to sit and relax.

We’d taken the boat from the train station to the main part of Zhujiajiao but decided to walk back, which gives you a different view of it, which was worthwhile to let the world pass by a little bit as there were very few tourists.

We then went looking for another social media place, some shops advertised as Shanghai’s Harajuku. Again, not my thing, but why not. It turned out to be four or five lively buildings with a lot of social media people making content. Now quite what we were looking for, and no available restaurants for dinner.

We also couldn’t find another building - an old French style apartment building - and since it was dark, we decided to give it a miss.

Fortunately on the way to the train station, we passed a fairly low key (from the outside) Italian restaurant, but inside it was nice looking, and the food was excellent and not really that expensive, so that was a stroke of luck.

Despite the food I’d been wanting to try a small family run but franchised place a few doors down from the hotel. Every day we’d walked past a sign for a and a spicy ground pork burger in a large bread bun, so I gave it a try, and it was fantastic. Really.

If that wasn’t enough, I picked up some cucumber flavour crisps from the Family Mart. It was amazing how much they tasted like cucumber. Well done whoever made them.

Day 5

Ah, the last day. We’d left this day quite open in case we found something on the previous days, or had missed something. Whilst we thought about it, we went back to the old town for one last look around and picked up some souvenirs.

I’d been thinking about the building we went looking for the previous evening, but couldn’t find. Reading up, it used to be called the Normandy Apartments, as it was a French influenced bit of architecture from the 1920s, but is now called the Wukang Mansions. I thought I now knew how to get there, and it was only a few minutes on the train, so off we went.

As it was, the intersection in front of it was packed with tourists and social media people, but it is a nice building, even with some dark parts to its history, so we took in the atmosphere, then found a tea and pastry shop (it’s a theme, I know).

Soon then we needed to be back to the hotel, pick up our suitcases as we were flying that night. It also meant one more chance to stop in at the same food place from the previous night, this time with the magic of phone translation we got some ramen style noodles, some sweet pork, and another spicy ground pork bun.

So indeed we got on our last train and headed to the airport. It was quick and simple and was a nice relaxing end to a fairly busy trip.

Given the hurried organisation and that we had different goals, it had worked well and we got to see a lot of what we planned and a lot of what we hadn’t which I always consider to be the sign of a good trip!

2026 A Quick Trip to Shanghai