Spending the holiday season in Shanghai

I'd been feeling very emotional at being apart from my family for the first time for Christmas but I was very fortunate to have many friends in Shanghai to spend it with. It was so strange that Christmas is just another working day out here - in UK I'm used to everything being shut and streets empty!

On the 10th December some of my old classmates and some new friends came together at City Bull at East Nanjing Lu where we ate a huge dinner! Complete with a giant turkey! It was the first time many of my friends had seen something like this so it felt really special to share the experience with them. We did a secret santa too and had a lot of fun.

Christmas eve was spent at a friend's friend's house where we ate roast chicken instead of turkey as turkey seemed to cost 5 times more than the chicken! The great thing here as was at Thanksgiving is that some restaurants do a delivery package which includes the main turkey/chicken and all the sides and dessert to enjoy at home.

Christmas day I booked to go to Bloc with some friends where we enjoyed a 5 course meal which was a little strange as we were able to substitute courses for others so me not liking a salad wanted some more ice cream which got delivered during the salad course...... so yeah, I started with ice cream and finished with ice cream!

New Year's eve was spent at a Japanese restaurant with some friends where we then tried to take a taxi to Mr and Mrs Bund to the party La Boum. However, traffic was so awful it took over half an hour for a usual 5 minute ride. The roads were closed around The Bund and so we had to get out and walk. We ended up cornered in some side street with so many people staring at the Oriental Pearl. When the fireworks started this young girl next to me just went mental like she'd never seen fireworks before! Completely annoyed me and my friends managed to squeeze out the crowd and head to the Bund but found the police taped it off so we could only stand in the freezing cold waiting to make it to the club.

It was nice though to see big red lanterns being lit and launched into the sky. Unfortunately one got caught in the tree but I guess fortunate it didn't set the tree on fire. We finally could move and headed to Mr and Mrs Bund where the entrance fee was still full price despite it nearly being 1am.