With Charlie and Ella in Shanghai for 2 weeks at the beginning of August we tried to cram in as much as we possibly could.  This was especially difficult in the hottest weather of the year.  It also meant that we revisited some of the many things I have shown you over the last 6 months, although we also did some things that were new to all of us.  It also meant that there was no time, or energy for writing.  So we shall be in retrospective land for many posts to come .

The Hai Di Lao Hot Pot Restaurant

Not long into their stay with us, we took Ella and Charlie back to a Hot Pot restaurant Richard and I had visited in February not long after we had got to China, The Hai Di Lao Pot Pot Restaurant. It was hot work, although we had ordered a double hot pot mixture to cook the food into  – one smothered in chillies on the left which the men went at with gusto and a much milder mushroom-flavoured cooking mixture on the right for the more sensible female contingent.

Anyone who thinks these two clowns aren’t related needs their head examining.

The Yan’an Zhong Lu Park

Earlier on in the day, whilst Richard had had to go back home to work (it was a Saturday)

I took Ella and Charlie to see the awarding winning park on the south side of Yan’an Zhong Lu. (Ella’s father is a landscape designer). Both Charlie and Ella liked the open-air gym and both agreed with me that it would be fabulous if we could replicate this in the UK.  As Ella’s father does work for Worcestershire County Council maybe one day, that will be more than a pipe dream.

You can see them in action here.