At home in Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghai yesterday and so far we have gone to the grocery store, unpacked, slept, bought coffee from McDonald’s, walked to Nik’s new office, taken the subway back from Nik’s office, found a good pastry shop, hung out at the apartment waiting for the rain to stop, eaten lunch at a decent chain restaurant, walked through a rose garden, gone the grocery store again, purchased an umbrella, come home again, and written our first China blog posts.

The apartment *

We probably won’t leave the apartment again for the rest of the night as we struggle to stay awake past 7pm so that we can sleep later than 1am. Then tomorrow morning, Nik will leave for his first day of work and I will spend my day researching the city and deciding what to do next.

I want to write about my first impressions of the city as a resident, but I am too tired to develop my ideas completely. So as a consolation, I will leave you with a few photos of our apartment. It is a huge complex (400+ serviced apartments) in the Luwan neighborhood of downtown Shanghai just south of the French Concession and North of the Lupu bridge over the Huangpu River. The buildings are newish, and the interiors seem like they were furnished within the past 5 years. The apartment is a good size…not too big, not too small. It is a one bedroom with a good sized kitchenette, small living room, balcony and nice sized bathroom. The furniture is too big for the space, but it’s comfortable and simple. Basically, we are living in a nice hotel room. I could have just said that, and you would have understood!

The apartment entrance *

View from balcony *

Courtyard between buildings

Kitchen

Bedroom

And the best part...we have a washing machine *

Nik has also done a blog post about the apartment: Back in Shanghai

* Photos by Nik