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Saturday 14th January
We started late and finished early today and the parentals were in bed by 10pm. (I, being me, read until past midnight, but that's usual.)
Today was mostly retracing steps from yesterday and the day before - back to the Dapuxiao complex and the Taikang Rd shops, then back to the apartment. There are some nifty little shops back there, and my parents have bought gifts for people all over the place - a lovely lacquer tile place in particular that does beautiful bright work.
Dinner was a hotpot/steamboat experience at a place back near our apartment. The parentals want to take the SIL and her family out to dinner, and they'd like to do a hotpot. So we went into the place with the muddy noodles (see Thursday brunch) and tried their hotpot and it was good.
And then we came home and the parentals fell asleep on the couch until i woke them up and told them to go to bed or else they'd wake up with cricks in their necks.
Sunday 15th January
Stepdad is having back issues so he stayed back at the apartment for most of the day, while Mum and I went out in our own directions before lunch. Mum went back to the Taikang Rd shops in Dapuxiao to get some more lacquer tiles, and I went out to Yuyuan Gardens (another famous shopping district in Shanghai) although I didn't go shopping, but to sit in the Renaissance hotel, drink tea, and write.
After lunch, Mum and I went fabric shopping.
We went to the Shilingpu Silk Markets and I bought about 13m of silk brocade for quiltmaking. For $100AUD. *strokes the fabric lovingly* I now have enough fabric for a double-sided quilt, possibly with a little patchwork for decoration.
It's all neatly folded and packed in my case, ready for transport home.
Dinner was the stepbrother's wedding dinner with his wife's family: her aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc. In this case, I think the aunts and uncles are more family friends, so not family in the traditional sense, but still "the important people" in her life.
The dinner was a 10-course traditional Chinese dinner in private rooms up the back of the hotel. It was at the Shanghai Peninsula Hotel, which is swanky, and turned out pretty well.
A small amusement: my stepbro's mother - who still hasn't forgiven mum for the divorce between her and stepdad (never mind that they were unofficially separated long before mum and the stepdad married) - eased behind a potplant to get past a small knot of people in a narrow thoroughfare - one which included my mum. As in...through the leaves, edging between a wall and the pot.
Ah well. What else do we live for but to make sport of our neighbours and be made sport of in return?
I couldn't sleep. We were drying clothes, so we had the heating turned way up, and I think it was just too hot for me, even in my room with the door shut and my heating off. Result: I'm feeling kinda drained this morning.
Today is the fancy shopping districts - an upmarket-looking shopping centre in our area that we didn't discover until yesterday, and the Bund. High tea at the Fairmont Peace Hotel (great architecture) and dinner with stepbro, SIL, and her mum, aunt, sister, and bestie (parental dinner for them, compared with Friday which was SIL's family's dinner for mum and Uncle V).
And then tomorrow we're doing a tour to Suzhou. Something about...water canals and towns and old-style buildings? *is a little vague on this point*
We started late and finished early today and the parentals were in bed by 10pm. (I, being me, read until past midnight, but that's usual.)
Today was mostly retracing steps from yesterday and the day before - back to the Dapuxiao complex and the Taikang Rd shops, then back to the apartment. There are some nifty little shops back there, and my parents have bought gifts for people all over the place - a lovely lacquer tile place in particular that does beautiful bright work.
Dinner was a hotpot/steamboat experience at a place back near our apartment. The parentals want to take the SIL and her family out to dinner, and they'd like to do a hotpot. So we went into the place with the muddy noodles (see Thursday brunch) and tried their hotpot and it was good.
And then we came home and the parentals fell asleep on the couch until i woke them up and told them to go to bed or else they'd wake up with cricks in their necks.
Sunday 15th January
Stepdad is having back issues so he stayed back at the apartment for most of the day, while Mum and I went out in our own directions before lunch. Mum went back to the Taikang Rd shops in Dapuxiao to get some more lacquer tiles, and I went out to Yuyuan Gardens (another famous shopping district in Shanghai) although I didn't go shopping, but to sit in the Renaissance hotel, drink tea, and write.
After lunch, Mum and I went fabric shopping.
We went to the Shilingpu Silk Markets and I bought about 13m of silk brocade for quiltmaking. For $100AUD. *strokes the fabric lovingly* I now have enough fabric for a double-sided quilt, possibly with a little patchwork for decoration.
It's all neatly folded and packed in my case, ready for transport home.
Dinner was the stepbrother's wedding dinner with his wife's family: her aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc. In this case, I think the aunts and uncles are more family friends, so not family in the traditional sense, but still "the important people" in her life.
The dinner was a 10-course traditional Chinese dinner in private rooms up the back of the hotel. It was at the Shanghai Peninsula Hotel, which is swanky, and turned out pretty well.
A small amusement: my stepbro's mother - who still hasn't forgiven mum for the divorce between her and stepdad (never mind that they were unofficially separated long before mum and the stepdad married) - eased behind a potplant to get past a small knot of people in a narrow thoroughfare - one which included my mum. As in...through the leaves, edging between a wall and the pot.
Ah well. What else do we live for but to make sport of our neighbours and be made sport of in return?
I couldn't sleep. We were drying clothes, so we had the heating turned way up, and I think it was just too hot for me, even in my room with the door shut and my heating off. Result: I'm feeling kinda drained this morning.
Today is the fancy shopping districts - an upmarket-looking shopping centre in our area that we didn't discover until yesterday, and the Bund. High tea at the Fairmont Peace Hotel (great architecture) and dinner with stepbro, SIL, and her mum, aunt, sister, and bestie (parental dinner for them, compared with Friday which was SIL's family's dinner for mum and Uncle V).
And then tomorrow we're doing a tour to Suzhou. Something about...water canals and towns and old-style buildings? *is a little vague on this point*
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That was more self-pitying as it reads than as I meant it. I chose my lifestyle, and if giving up a life of gallivanting is the price, I pay it gladly. But having traveled in my youth, I enjoy doing it vicariously now.
There. Much better.
Anyway, I wanted to check in and say that I was enjoying these posts, because I really don't have anything to say in return, so I haven't been commenting, but I also didn't want you to think that you were posting out into a silent night with only the sound of crickets for company.
Take me as having read, even if I haven't left tracks.