People's Square Park

When I went to Shanghai last month for Town Hall, I had a free day to explore. I spent the morning at City Shop (an international food store). I had a great lunch there, and spent an hour or so shopping for things I haven't been able to find here in Nanjing. Then I decided to go explore People's Square. 

I wasn't ever sure when I'd be moving to Nanjing, so People's Square was just one of those things I thought I'd have time to check out. I loved the park there. It was so serene and peaceful. Read the picture below if you'd like to know the history of the park. 

I also wanted to point out the park map. It is a rather large park. I wanted to highlight the areas in yellow on the map. That's the "children's playground" area. What they really mean by that is carnival-type rides at the park. I just find it funny that most large parks have a mini-amusement park built right in.

I was alone that day, so I had to take pictures of myself, by myself :)

This was the tunnel-like structure that connected one part of the park to another. I thought it was really pretty the way the light hit.

Some old building surrounding the park. You can't see it from this picture, but there is a Starbucks right behind the trees. Gotta love the picture-perfect locations!

The pond inside the park. I wish it was a little warmer the day I went so I could have spent more time by it.

In other Shanghai news, this is what I spent rest of my time doing:

That's right, Cold Stone Creamery. It was a little bit of a letdown though to be honest. They had their menu of all these wonderful sundaes, and I picked out one I wanted and the lady said "don't have". Then I picked out another, same response. Finally, I asked "what do you have then?" and she signaled to all the candy mix-ins. So I pointed to the heath bars. She again said "don't have". Then I tried kit kat, same response. I ended up getting brownie bits and caramel on top. It was delicious, just not exactly what I wanted. Oh China.

That night, I met up with my co-worker Jennifer and we went to Mr. Pancake House. Apparently it was so popular that he opened up a new location. We went to the new location (it'd only been open a few weeks) and I had some nutella and banana crepes, bacon, eggs, and hash browns. And some custom blended apple/orange juice. We needed to get "official" receipts for work reimbursement, but the waiter told us they didn't have the machine at the new location yet. He said he'd call over to the other location to get them brought over for us. Then, he came back and said that they couldn't bring them over, but he'd take us there. He'd been really nice the whole time, so we figured why not. We walked outside and he said "this is my car" (signaling towards a really nice Lexus). Turns out our waiter was Mr. Pancake himself! He told us his name (Mac because he likes Steve Jobs), and the story of how the Mr. Pancake House came to be. He and his wife are from Shanghai, but his wife lived in New York for four years and fell in love with pancakes. When she moved back to Shanghai, she told him they should open a restaurant. He said that she's the boss, so he listened and opened a restaurant. He said the name came to him in a dream. We also found out he has a 3 month old little girl. It was a neat experience for us :)