Strolling by the river

Today we are going for a walk along the Bund in Puxi - visiting Shanghai's colonial past while looking at its modern facade.

We started off by taking the ferry from the end of our street. But, we got on the wrong ferry. There are two ferries that go to the Puxi side from Dong Chang Road. We took the one that went away from the colonial Bund rather than the one that went towards it. But it was no big deal. We just walked a little more.

 That red boat, that is the ferry we should have taken! But we were in the wrong gangplank area. It docked to the right of us.

From the ferry, we got some good views of the area around us. This is our apartment complex from the ferry.

And a view of the ferry building...

The ferry is very inexpensive. It is 2 yuan per person per ride, which is about $0.30. It is a commuter ferry on the weekdays but is also a way for people to get out on weekends and go across the river. Motorbikes and bicycles are also allowed on the ferry.

This is the landward side of the ferry building where we got off.

We walked along a city street parallel to the river till we found a place to climb up onto the Bund walkway.

The walkway goes for miles. It is not so crowded here, where we got on. But it got progressively more crowded as we walked and as the day wore on.

Here is a gratuitous flower photo from the Bund

The Bund was the center of colonial life in the early part of the twentieth century. These are some of the buildings that date from that era.

Lions guard many of the buildings.

A close-up of the entrance to the Peace Hotel.

We also came across a couple getting their wedding photos taken on one of the streets taking off from the Bund.

I saw my first China Post box. They are green.

There is also a lovely sculpture of a bull on the Bund. Apparently there is one on Wall Street? The Bund is now home to the offices of many of China's largest banks and is part of its financial district. The bull is meant to represent the financial market. No bear to be seen though.

See the colors in the background of that photo? That is a gorgeous mural made of flowers that extends a long way along the Bund at street level.

Those weren't the only flowers on the Bund. The buildings had lovely boxes of flowers in front of them.

We also had the privilege of seeing them being set up. Lots of potted plants, soil and lots of boxes get unloaded from trucks and then the gardeners set to work.

As we continued, we saw this monument but I have no idea what it is or whom it represents.

All the lovely flowers are maintained by swarms of gardeners. Here is one weeding the flower bed you can see in the edge of the previous photo.

We ended our walk at the Monument to the People's Heroes.

There were a number of walls with writing in Chinese surrounding the Monument. Maybe they were the names of the heroes. We walked down a ramp to a wall of sculpture.

We made our way back up to catch a view of the Pudong skyline from the Monument.

You can see that our wedding couple has caught up to us here!

We walked back to the Bund ferry terminal and caught a ferry back home. We barely made the ferry and therefore were not able to get a place on the top deck which has outside seating. From inside, the only pictures were through the glass and it was tinted yellow - either from dirt or to cut down the sun's glare in the summer.

You can see the ferry terminal (white) and a floating restaurant (red) next to it. The floating restaurant is lit up at night and we can see it from our study window. I think I have posted pictures of it at night from the landward side before.

As we near the dock, there are people waiting to catch this ferry on its trip back to the Puxi side of the river.

And last but not least, a sign of the seasons changing. The pansies in front of our apartment building have been replaced with petunias.

This is a very photo heavy post. I hope the wait to load it was worth it!