9:30am: Breakfast at Blatage Coffee
Blatage Coffee is a monochrome concept cafe. White walls and furniture, black cups and black sausage buns in 4 different styles. They do muffins and brownies as well. It is located along the Huangpu River, making it a perfect spot for some warm morning coffee!
11:30am: 1933 Old Millfun 1933老场坊 (1hr)
This place was once the largest cattle slaughterhouse in Shanghai. It consists of 50cm thick concrete walls, but hollow to help control the air temperature. All the intertwining staircases, ramps, bridges and corridors were designed to help guide thousands of workers to their stations and millions of cattle to their deaths. The rough floor surfaces help prevent the cattle from slipping. The building's sharp angles create small spaces for people to stand in, in case the cattle starts to panic. Today, it has become one of the top photo spots in Shanghai for social media and wedding shoots.
1:30pm: Lunch at Jia Jia Soup Dumpling 佳家汤包
Next, we head to Jia Jia Soup Dumpling for lunch. Jia Jia is voted as the best soup dumpling place in Shanghai, you have to try its crab dumpling! Their top selling item is their meat soup dumpling (纯鲜肉汤包), followed by crab and meat soup dumpling (蟹粉鲜肉), then signature crab roe soup dumpling (招牌纯蟹黄). If you can't decide which to get, you can go for the all-in-one (全家福), which comes with meat, crab and meat, and mushroom and meat!
3pm: Shanghai Postal Museum 上海邮政博物馆 (1hr)
After which, we head to Shanghai Postal Museum. Completed in 1924, it is listed as one of the “ten main buildings of Shanghai” at that time. In the early years of the Republic of China, Shanghai was the center of China's postal network. After the Chinese civil war (1927-1949), the building continued to be the headquarters of Shanghai's postal administration. From 2003, parts of the building were converted to Shanghai Postal Museum. Postal administration functions had moved out, but the retail post office operation continue from the trading hall.
4pm: %Arabica Roastery, %Arabica 烘培工坊
%Arabica is probably one of the most successful coffee chain brand who started out from a small shop in Kyoto in late 2014. It currently has over 80 stores across the globe in countries like Bahrain, France, Kuwait, UAE and UK. What a big achievement in just a couple of years' time, with just one item on the menu - coffee! There's 42 stores in China itself, 8 of which are located within Shanghai. This store and roastery at Yuanmingyuan Road is massive! I see that other than coffee, they offer coffee soft serve, matcha latte, soda drinks and some French pastries here as well.
4:30pm: Walk around The Bund 外滩, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower 东方明珠塔 (2hrs) + sunset
After a nice coffee break, we take a walk around The Bund. You can discover many small shops and museums along The Bund. The Bund is Shanghai’s most popular spot. A blend of historical architecture from the 19th century with modern skyscrapers. The best locations to get a full view of The Bund is either on the Huangpu River Cruise parked along Binjiang Avenue, or from one of the skyscrapers – Shanghai World Financial Centre, Oriental Pearl TV Tower, Jin Mao Tower and Shanghai Tower.
The river that runs across here is the Huangpu River. This area is categorised into three zones, historical featuring Shanghai’s industrial legacy, a cultural space with musuems and galleries, and lastly as a nature spot. The river divides the city into 2 halves – Puxi and Pudong. Spot the Oriental Pearl TV Tower that is on the other side of the river. The Oriental Pearl TV Tower is the tallest building in China from 1994-2007. It features 11 spheres and is classified as a 5A scenic area – most important and well maintained tourist attraction of China. See it light up with different LED sequences at night!
6:30pm: Dinner at Cejerdary 蟹家大院
We head to Cejerdary for dinner next, who specialises in crab noodles. There is the crabmeat noodles (蟹肉肉) at RMB72, or the crab roe noodles (蟹黄金) at RMB360. You can also get drunken mitten crabs (蟹醉了大闸蟹) as well, that is voted as "top 5 best mitten crabs in Shanghai".
Signature Crab Noodles.
7:30pm: Lighted-up Oriental Pearl TV Tower
*Instagram is rarely used in China. Most of the photos will be from Dazhong Dianping (大众点评) instead - a China app where users can share their photos and videos, rate and review food and places.
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