Old Shanghai

A week in Shanghai as tour guide for my wife for a week was a great way to reacquaint myself with Shanghai, visiting familiar places and discovering new to me corners of the city. Having someone you care a lot for to share it all with just enhances the experience.
Joy managed to find everything she came for and a few other items she hadn't though about until she saw them.
We stayed at Etour Youth Hostel Mingtown, right beside Peoples Park. You can use the Marriott Hotel as a landmark to help you relocate it. I've used this hostel several times before and it's great value for traveling couples as the double rooms with share bathroom facilities are spacious enough with air conditioning and heating as well as a writing desk, TV and electric kettle for boiling water. We were in room 102 which is on the ground floor and shares the bathroom with just one other room. Although patchy at times we could also connect to the WiFi in the room. The staff at Mingtown all speak pretty good English and on the whole are a friendly and cheerful bunch. Ph. 021-63277766
E-mail mingtown@foxmail.com
Shanghai is undergoing rapid redevelopment around the inner city with huge chunks of the old city falling victim to the wreckers machines. It amused me to find one original part of old Shanghai right next to an area that has been redeveloped to represent old Shanghai; the original is much more interesting with far more people in the streets and alley ways.
Shanghai is a city best explored on foot, arm yourself with a decent street map so that you can find your way home but try to just follow your ears and nose rather than sticking to a planned itinerary.
I've left Shanghai now, took the wonderfully modern fast train to Nanjing. Apart from the scenery slipping past my window at 160 KPH + and the loud phone conversations going on around me I could easily have believed I was back in Japan on the Shinkansen.