Bucket List or Bust! - Tokyo & Shanghai - November 2016

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by amymiller

Enjoying reading this so far. Am interested to go myself in the next few years so this is all very helpful information to me. Kinda testing the waters a bit with my trip to Hong Kong next month first. Hoping you may post a bit more about what you got up to there, so I can again steal some ideas.

You got some very cute bits in Primark, particularly liking the jewellery. Looking forward to reading more.

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how great! I bet I'm not done by the time you go. If you are thinking of going up to the peak I recommend the klook front of line pass, we went straight to the front, it was worth every penny! In fact we got lots of tickets via klook, they were great!

Originally Posted by vics18

Love the minnie sequin top! Does it change if you brush them up/down? I got a storm trooper own last week that changes into a tie fighter pilot

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ah yes it does! just a plain silver sequinned minnie head though

[amymiller]

Originally Posted by Hannikins

how great! I bet I'm not done by the time you go. If you are thinking of going up to the peak I recommend the klook front of line pass, we went straight to the front, it was worth every penny! In fact we got lots of tickets via klook, they were great!

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Great thanks for the tip, The Peak is definitely somewhere we are planning to visit and I had been worried about the crowds there!

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by amymiller

Great thanks for the tip, The Peak is definitely somewhere we are planning to visit and I had been worried about the crowds there!

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we did have crowds going down, we went for sunset and the queue skipping doesn't work on the way down. We queued for a good hour and getting a bus instead was also a no no as packed. So just don't make dinner plans for afterwards like we did and you'll avoid the stress levels!

[Hannikins]

ok so THIS happened last night!



so obviously I'm off to manchester to get some new clothes sorted for the holiday later, woohoo!

[hornetgirl]

Have you seen this website? Looks like it might be useful.

gotokyo/en/

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by hornetgirl

Have you seen this website? Looks like it might be useful.

gotokyo/en/

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ooo no that's a new one, I shall check it out! I'm currently finding Odigo a great tool, you pick what you want to do, over how many days it it works it all out for you, cool right!

[hornetgirl]

Originally Posted by Hannikins

ooo no that's a new one, I shall check it out! I'm currently finding Odigo a great tool, you pick what you want to do, over how many days it it works it all out for you, cool right!

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Oh my goodness, how fab is that. That's my weekend sorted, I'll be playing with it for hours

[Hannikins]

Originally Posted by hornetgirl

Oh my goodness, how fab is that. That's my weekend sorted, I'll be playing with it for hours

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I know that's my Sunday planned out!

[Hannikins]

So I've pretty much finished planning the shanghai portion of our trip, so it's about time I shared a few things we've finalised. Firstly... Hotels!

We knew we wanted to stay at Disney, I know you don't have to, and we didn't for Hong Kong, but it's right next to the airport we thought it would be great just to jump in a taxi and head over to our hotel.

Choices are of course limited!

Toy Story Hotel



or the Disneyland hotel


Now don't get me wrong, the Disneyland Hotel looks AMAZING! but it's also twice the price! Add to that the fact that you can walk to the parks from the Toystory hotel a little easier and we had ourselves a hotel!

We went for the basic room



but for two nights, including 2 days park tickets for the two of us the cost came to £380, which I didn't think was bad really! what do you think?

Shanghai itself was a lot more tricky. Thanks to the China's privacy laws google street view was a big no no so I really struggled to do my usual and work out how to get from A to B. For this hotel I had a few "musts"

- Easy to access from the metro, bonus if it was line 11 from Disney
- Same on the way back, if it was on the HND airport metro line another big tick
- Good metro line access
- Close to the sites we wanted to visit
- Some restaurants nearby

Not asking much then right!

Initially I hadn't really looked at restaurants and only had a very loose idea of the sights we wanted to see so I booked a refundable rate at

Shanghai Jinchen Hotel




A nice cheaper a cheerful 3 star, recently refurbished and £220 for 3 nights.

Unfortunately as my planning intensified I realised it was miles from any of the restaurants I wanted to try and not that great for the places we'd want to visit, So I cancelled it and started looking more around the People's Square area.

Central Hotel Shanghai


Slightly more expensive, again recently refurbished.

But then I found "The Metropole". I hadn't noticed it before as the trip advisor reviews were pretty dire but the last review was from 2014 and it was closed for most of 2015 for a full refurb, at £314 for 2 nights (yes I know, more expensive, but it's more central!) I decided it was worth the punt



Doesn't look amazing I know, but it's early 1900's and full of period detail inside





And obviously refurbed rooms.



I hope! Apart from the images on the "sales" sites all the review sites are really old, so I'm not 100% sure what to expect, still that's the fun bit right?

[Guest]

We looked at Central on our first plan. Metropole looks lovely! I had a mare trying to add tickets on when dummy booking the hotel - I could only add for 1 person!?