Hello, I will be traveling to Shanghai on my own before a pre-arranged tour. The goal of the "extra days" in advance (5 days) is to relax, get acclimated to China and eat lots of delicious food.

Things of interest would be:

day trips (is there a good tea plantation close by (or within an hour or two by train?)
spas
restaurants (dim sum??)
kung fu show/acrobatics show
dinner cruise

My hotel is already booked; am staying near the Bund (2 blocks away).

Thank you in advance for your suggestions!

5 days is quite a lot of time to spend in Shanghai. But the city could be used as a central point for day trips to other cities like Suzhou or Hangzhou. Both cities are less than 2 hrs away by train.

There is dim sum in Shanghai, but the real specialty is the xiaolongbao dumplings that are stuffed with not only filling, but soup too. The hairy crab ones are very good.

I've heard that this spa is good and reasonably priced. I tried to go but the taxi driver got lost and I gave up!


http://www.dragonfly.net.cn/pages/welcome.htm

Tea plantations are in Hangzhou, 4 hours roundtrip by train, take a cab up to the Longjing village (Dragon Well). A daytrip to a watertown could show you a different side of China vs. the cosmopolitan Shanghai.

Your hotel can arrange for shows and dinner cruise on the Huangpu River. And you can walk to Jiang Jiang Tangbao for the best xiaolongbao dumplings.

I now have 30 pages of notes on Shanghai!

Thank you Shanghainese and ekscrunchy. I leave for Shanghai on Thursday! Very exciting!

I have a week planned in Shanghai~ flying in on July 2. Is this really too much?

Freeman0819
Have a great trip. Remember to come back and report to us all the details - hotels etc. I have Shanghai on my short list.

freemman0819 -- Enjoy your relaxing time there, you'll love it.

lilybart -- Are you traveling anywhere else is China?

Thank you shanghainese. I can't wait to taste those dumplings! YUM!

If you haven't read it already, my post "23 Days in China..." has lots of information about delicious eating in Shanghai including dumplings and xlb.

I also visited Hangzhou so you can check out what we did there as well (and what we ate!)

Enjoy!

Linda

My son (who has been workingbat Henan Polytecnic U. for the last year, and is starting a new job in Beijing next month) and I were planning to spend a week in Shanghai, then take a train to Northern Vietnam and work out way down the coast, ending up in Ha Noi for 5-7 days.

However, my son has yet to get his Vietnam visa, due to his having to renew his work visa, surrender his passport for over a week, move his little household from Jiaozuo to Beijing then meet me in Shanghai. . . . all in the next week or so. We are hoping that he will be able to get his visa in Shanghai, if he applies as soon as he gets there.

So we may end up spending more time than planned in China, or, if he can't get his Vietnam visa and have enough time to actually visit Vietnam before reporting to his new job (he still hasn't told me exactly what it is~ he was looking for business-related work, as he just graduated as an econ major from Colorado College last year).

I welcome suggestions from you "China hands". There is such a wealth of information in this discussion forum~ I've been reading and printing out all the great suggestions.

We love museums, but we're also planning (thanks to a post on another thread) to visit a tea plantation and eat lots of dumplings. I'm also in the midst of reading a really cool autobiographical account of life in old Shanghai in this month's Harper's magazine.

lilybart -- a couple of days in Shanghai, daytrip to Suzhou, overnight in Hangzhou and another day visiting 1-2 watertowns, that makes a week. Not sure if you are into climbing up Huanshan (Yellow Mountain). Or you could fly out to Guilin/Yangshou for a few days to get a different experience from mega cities. And if your son doesn't get his Vietnam visa, you could go with him to Beijing and spend a few days there.

Is there actually a Vietnamese consulate in Shanghai? He may do better to try for expedited service while in Beijing.

There is a Vietnamese consulate in Shanghai.