27 Nov 2019
Our one day tour of Shanghai as part of Travel China Guide's 14 day package was derailed because Macron and Xi were meeting in Shanghai. Security was pervasive and really restricted our movements and the locations we could visit. Because we couldn't take the river tour of the Bund in the day time, we took it by night. Bonanza! Don't take the tour except at night. The buildings along the Bund put on a really spectacular light show which is not to be missed. Our guide, Sophie Lee, was the most knowledgeable and English-fluent guide we had at any time in the tour. (All the guides have good comprehension, good reading and writing skills and large vocabularies. What they lack is speaking skills because they very apparently haven't spent enough time conversing with and listening to native English speakers. As a result their pronunciation is very difficult to understand.) Sophie also took us to a restaurant that had the best food we ate in China. If you go to China, spend at least three days in Shanghai. It's an enormous city with lots to offer including the best food in China. The Travel China Guide tour put us on an 8 hour train trip to Shanghai followed by a two hour bus ride from the train station to our hotel, arriving after midnight. If you have the option of adjusting parts of your tour, try to avoid the long train ride, the late arrival and the bus. The MagLev train goes from the train station to the Bund in a few minutes and is a thrill all by itself at 300 miles an hour.