Well, Shanghai was quite interesting although two days was definitely enough time to spend there as there isn't too much to look at. The weather here in China is very cold - ranges between -2 and +3 degrees so the thermals are very useful and we are wearing several layers of clothes every time we go outdoors. Our first day in Shanghai was very wet and by mid afternoon there were hailstones too so we gave up on the sightseeing at about four o'clock, after having been to People's Square and wandered around the Civilised Park (very civilised - the rules stated that no person is to "urinate or shit" in the park; well at least they made themselves clear!), a visit to Shanghai Museum (where they have over 6,000 pieces of ancient Chinese bronze and porcelain and sculptures aplenty) and a walk down the Nanjing Road to the Bund. That evening, we took the metro to the Shanghai Circus World to see Era - an acrobatic show with the basic premise of a love story. It was absolutely incredible; the Chinese really know how to put on a show and they acrobats were doing things that shouldn't humanly be possible! I think the craziest thing we saw that evening, as well as the Wheel of Life, was the spherical cage where they had a guy on a motorbike riding sideways and upside down in circles; he was then joined by another guy, and another, and another until eventually there were eight of them going round and round in this tiny cage - totally crazy (random information for Tree:the show was choreographed by Debra Brown).

The weather was much better for our second day - bright blue skies and sunshine but still bitterly cold. We carried on where we'd left off the day before, and went to visit the Oriental Pearl Tower. It looks a bit like a couple of olives on a cocktail stick but is about 400 metres high, with several viewing platforms and a revolving restaurant where we had our lunch. We visited all of the viewing platforms and had a really good view of the city as it was such a clear day; one of the viewing platforms is outside and has a clear glass floor so that you can see all the way below you. Simon loved this one, and I went out onto it too but stayed right by the wall and got about a third of the way round before I had to go back inside - it just feels really wrong to have 'nothing' underneath you at that height... I took a photo of Simon leaning against the glass (it came out fairly well considering I had my eyes almost shut - Mum, you would have absolutely hated it!)

We spent the afternoon and evening back at the hostel, swapping travel stories with other travellers there, before heading back to Shanghai Railway Station to catch our 21:30 overnight train to Beijing. When we booked our tickets, the lady at the hostel had written down several options in Cantonese for us to give to the ticket office as they didn't speak English. Our first two choices weren't available and so we ended up with the third - the slightly more expensive Express train which is 10 hours instead of 13 - but we realised that we had no idea whether they'd given us a compartment with a bed or just a seat in one of the carriages, and as it was so close to Chinese New Year we thought the train might be packed. Desperately hoping that we had a bed, we boarded the train with another couple of travellers who turned out to be in the same compartment as we were (four beds - hurrah!). Mark and Coman are from Ireland and had been in Hong Kong at around the same time as we were and had also spent a couple of days in Shanghai. It was great to have someone speaking the same language who we could chat to and we spent a good few hours talking about where we've all been and sharing the ubiquitous travellers' rations of Oreos, chocolate chip cookies and Sprite, as well as some of the cherries we'd bought the day before. The beds were not too comfortable (beanbags for pillows?!) but at least none of us snored so we managed to get a few hours' sleep before arriving in Beijing at 7.30 in the morning - a whole new adventure awaits!