Our second day in China started with a subway trip over to Shanghai Stadium. I'd stayed in this area during my trip in April, so I knew it had a grocery store to pick up snacks and treats for the kiddos before grabbing lunch. It was only two subway stops away from our hotel so it made it an easy place to get to.
Chengbin was incredibly excited for this gigantic bowl of noodle goodness that was bigger than him!!
Everything we ordered was outstanding, a reward for our willingness to walk in to a restaurant and point to things on a menu completely in Chinese! ;)
I'm shocked to say that even Katelynn decided to be adventurous during this trip to China! She tried absolutely everything we ordered and kept commenting how good it all was!! If you know how picky Katelynn is, you know what a big deal this was for us!
Honestly, we had walked around debating for a while on where to eat and decided to give this place a try! It's more intimidating to walk into a restaurant in China where you have a language barrier and need to order than it is in European countries. We had decided ahead of time that we were going to be as adventurous as possible this trip and not let fear of the unknown or language barriers hold us back. Boy we were glad we did because this meal was soooooo good. Looking back, we all agree it's the best meal we had in China!
After lunch we decided to go do a little shopping and exploring of Yu Yuan Garden. The kids had a small list of China shopping must haves & we knew this was the place to go!
It was also so nice to have my good friend Michelle with us for our grand Chinese adventure. She is an adoptee herself, and has been such a source of support for our family. She has met up with us a few times down at Disney to vacation with us, so it only seemed natural for her to go with us to China to pick up the new additions to the Wilks Fam!
This random Japanese store made all the kids and Matt the big kid SUPER excited!!! Our family plays Pokémon Go as a hobby and this had legit Pokémon stuff the kids loved! Plus it had an entire wall of vending machines! The kids (& Dad of course) picked out little Pokémon & Gundam toys. Plus each kiddo picked out a sweet, huggable little pokie buddy. :)
By the time we'd spent a few hours over there we were exhausted as jet lag once again began to set in. We headed back over to the hotel, and at Michelle's urging, Matt and I went out for a little Shanghai date night dinner- just the two of us.
Back we went to the noodle house across the street from our hotel that we'd gone to the night before. Only this time, we weren't about to fall asleep. We sat there, drank our endless tea refills, ate some delicious food and reflected how long it might be before we had a nice quiet dinner to ourselves again. Haha!!
And thus, the end of Day Two in Shanghai. We had one more day to explore the city before things changed forever. One more day until Lily Day! Going to bed that night we were torn between resting the whole next day or going out. Ultimately we decided to sleep in, hang out around the room a good amount of the day and make one good journey out to do some sightseeing. We were looking forward to it.
