Up for free breakfast but went back to bed because I felt really tired though I wasn't sure why. Figured that we wouldn't normally be able to though so made the best of it and slept until after lunch time.
The food hall at the metro station we transferred at was really impressive and we spent quite a while wandering around it and marvelling at the range of things to eat, from actually quite delicious looking to downright scary.
We stopped at a place that bizarrely sold, amongst other things, fish scotch eggs. Anyone who knows Matt will know his passion for scotch eggs and will therefore know that he was powerless to resist. It was was covered in a very strange textured fish instead of sausage and was floating in some sort of stock but it was quite tasty.
We then went to take a look at the French Concession part of town. Found a gorgeous little shop and found Eve and Dan's wedding present. The girl in there was very sweet and personalised the gifts while we ran to the ATM. She was even going to take us to the Post Office to send it but I didn't have the cool card I'd bought in Xi'an with me and couldn't remember the 2nd half of the postcode. She was so lovely that she offered to take us tomorrow, even though she wasn't at work and would have to get the girl who was working to call her so she could come out. She also posed for some photos so we can send Eve and Dan a picture of exactly who made their present.
It had started raining by this point and we seemed to be the only people in Shanghai who didn't have a brolly. We popped into another shop and bought a long-over luggage tag for Matt and they were kind enough to wrap and seal our other presents in plastic bags so that they didn't get damaged by the rain.
I'd been complaining that my hair needed cutting and so we popped into a hairdressers that we'd seen on the way back. I had no way to communicate what I wanted and so just let them get on with it. The hair wash was just fantastic. They soap up your hair by squirting clear liquid onto your head and massaging it as you sit upright in a chair. The massage was the loveliest thing I've felt since we set off but relaxing into it seemed to bring on a cold and by the time I'd laid over the sink to have it washed out, my throat was feeling sore and my head was getting stuffy.
The hairdresser cut my hair with intense concentration, though he didn't cut much off at a time, he cut the same section of hair again and again until it got panic-worthy short. All the while I could see Matt sat behind me and was trying to work out the various faces he was trying not to make. After a long while, the hairdresser was satisified that he'd cut enough and pulled out the hairdryer. He straightened it to within an inch of its life as he dried it and eventually framed it around my face in a way that knew would not last a minute as soon as I hit the moisture outside. Needless to say, I now look rather butch and masculine but at least I only paid £8 for the priviledge and wont need another haircut all year. Matt seemed tempted by a cute manga cut but we had to head back for the stupidly early last Metro so maybe tomorrow.
Feeling pretty shoddy by the time we got back so crawled into bed with a Lemsip.
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