Wed 17th Aug - Shanghai

Shanghai is like Manhattan on double steroids, bigger, taller, musclier and with tons more people and far cleaner (at least the centre)..I am inspecting the vast areas of tall buildings from my 81st floor suite..the whole front wall is made of glass..an advantage until yesterday..this morning I woke up very early from the noise of high winds and driving rain far more audible against the glass wall than would have been on concrete. Could not go back to sleep so left comatosed Theo in bed for another three hrs whilst I had a long breakfast, manicure, pedicure, head and shoulders massage and a consultation with the head concierge about where to go and what to see in the City. Heaven!
We started from the cultural centre of the Town - The Peoples Square and the Shanghai museum. Before going to the right place dim taxi driver took us to the Shanghai exhibition centre instead where we bought tickets and walked into a chinese books exhibition - all in chinese..no wonder we were the only foreigners around..swift exit and another taxi driver, this one right dodgy, left the meter on from previous customer at CNY40 thinking we would not notice the 5min drive was going to cost double the earlier 20min ride..we had a small altercation with him when I just handed him CNY20 but he bid a fast retreat when we started waiving our hotel umbrellas in the manner of Shaolin sticks..
The museum had a good collection of pottery, calligraphy, jade, furniture, paintings, etc but was not fantastic..still it was free..then we went to the zoo that is Old Street and surrounding streets..This is the upper market flea market of Shanghai with all kinds of shops selling every traditional Chinese arts & crafts, street performers, chinese theatre, persistent beggars, Rolex street sellers, the works! we spent few hours there, bought jewellery at Fangua - apparently famous chinese jeweller that had enjoyed the custom of many visiting dignitaries as conveyed by the photos around the shop. We ate at traditional Shanghainese restaurant of Lo Bo Lang under the picture of younger Bill & Hilary Clinton enjoying the same specialities..I know I should not be surprised by now at how much Theodore can put away, but he did surprise me and the serving staff with his gargantuan appetite..we then brought Theodore and his belly baby back to the hotel for couple of hours of reading and relaxing before we visited the 2 bars of the hotel..Cloud 9 on the 87th floor - very impressive but we preferred the much warmer (literally the chinese do crank up the aircon to the point that you would gladly wear a cardigan indoors) piano bar on 53rd floor. Jazz duo piano and bull-bass accompanied a miaowing singer..we sincerely could not tell when she was singing chinese vs english but the Chilean wine was good and managed to resist temptation of buying a cohiba cigar from the impressive cigar box..