More than meets the eye in Shanghai

Ric and I have spent another busy couple of days here in Shanghai. I think this place is gradually growing on me. It's certainly got a lot happening, not too mention an abundance of shops and restaurants! I love observing the fashions in each place we visit and the girls here are just as trendy as those in Hong Kong and much more adventurous than I've ever been. They all look totally different too. I'm not sure why I expected a uniform dress code.

I enjoyed meeting up with another MA friend yesterday. Such a gorgeous girl. She's now a teacher and about to marry a older guy she has only known for a year, doesn't really love and hardly ever sees but who is rich and 'a good son to his parents'. To someone like me, this seems like quite a sad situation and a premature decision for someone at the tender age of 25, but for her it is enough that they get on. She wants children ASAP and he will provide for her and their children. We are so conditioned in to thinking we must marry for love in the West it's hard to understand this reasoning.

Today we visited the highly recommended Shanghai Museum which houses an impressive collection of ancient pottery, coins and seals as well as some pretty calligraphy and paintings. To think that all of those fragile pieces remain in perfect condition after so many hundreds of years! The mind boggles. They were also showing a collection of Olympian art works in honour of the Games this summer. I think I'd seen a lot of them before at the British Museum in London.

To get out of the heat we then went to the cinema, yet again. I've been going far more regularly on this trip than I ever did in London. We watched the new Will Smith Blockbuster 'Hancock' and I whole heartily recommend it if you like silly but slick action films about begrudging superheroes. After the film we walked back out on to the street to find a group of older folk ballroom dancing to a live brass band. They drew quite a crowd. See photo.

Speaking of super-humans, the zip in my cheapo Primark wallet broke yesterday so I've bought myself a fantastic 'Astro Boy' one which changes pictures depending on which way you look at it. It's smarter than it sounds and not for children! I haven't seen the cartoon since I was at least 6 years old and Ric never watched it as I don't think it reached the UK in the mid 1980s. But oh the memories.

Ric and I spend an awful lot of time wandering around malls and up and down roads looking for restaurants. We've spent literally hours on this trip looking for places with menus we can read, for those which look the cleanest, most reasonably priced, most varied and suitable for both our needs, well OK, mainly mine. It's proving hard to go wrong here in China, although after eating what I thought was a tofu burger today Ric confirmed it as pork. I admit it was quite tasty but I felt quite sick after.

I confuse staff daily by asking for food without meat or fish, to which they have variously responded with expressions of surprise, dismay, contempt or confusion and then after a few minutes and some further deliberation they bring me some boiled greens. I lie - sometimes I end up with a feast. Ric admits he's eating very healthily these days. For his sake alone I wish I wanted to eat meat.

We are finally leaving Shanghai tomorrow and catching a train to Hangzhou. I'm not looking forward to joining the scrum at the station with all our luggage, although we did get our tickets in advance which should make things easier. It's only an hour or so west of here and boasts a magnificent lake. We can go cycling and hiking there too I'm informed!

I'm missing all the tennis back home which is something of a first for me!