Pieces from last week

Last week went by really really fast again. Seems like we are having friends popping by here almost every single week and weekly promise to “get-back-to-normal-pace” just goes further and further.

Well friends are anyway nothing to complain, so this is what has happened in the last week.

On Monday it was tricky day at school and after the lectures me and Essi were totally ready to get some chocolate therapy from Whisk (the awesome chocolate restaurant which I found some time ago). We went there chocolate cakes mirroring from our eyes and what happened when we reached the door? “Closed on Mondays” NOOOOOO!?!?!??!?!?! Due to our mood we definitely need some substitutes. It was hard decision whether to go wandering to Xuhui area or French Concession in a search for perfect café place. We ended up with French Concession and, hih, after couple of blocks Costa Caffee came into our way.

Eager to get some caffeine and, I think I already mentioned, chocolate we went in. I was also super hungry since I didn’t have time for a lunch between the lectures due to my passport&visa –mess (which is now finally over). So my lunch set was large cappuccino, mushroom&cheese –toast and peach cheese cake.

After the lecture

Tea's Lunch

Essi's Lunch

Yum-yum

The large cappuccino here is almost one liter so enough to get me super-energetic. Because of this energy we decided to walk to Barbarossa at the People Square where we were to meet some friends for happy hour drinks. The drinks here are just absolutely the best ones! We made a deal to go through the whole drink list before July not to miss any new all-time favorite. The list is not that super long so I think we will manage this. This week’s drinks were Apple bomb (surprise surprise) and Berry infusion.

View from Barbarossa

Check out the ingredients of the drinks!!!

Sparkling wine drinks :)

Barbarossa's Maroccon style interior

After the drinks it was time for – BAM BAM BAM – buying the Formula 1 tickets for next month. And WE ARE ON!!!! Stand B1-4 with probably around 200 other Finns cheering for Kimi on April 14^th. 

So after buying the tickets we decided to have a little celebration in Zapata’s with free margaritas. The interior has changed during the last couple of weeks when I last time came here. Also the menus have quite weird added site-notes.

Free Margaritas

Quite a Tequila...

Anyway after the margarita it was time to head home and prepare for the Tuesday morning lectures and Chinese quiz.

The highlight of the Tuesday was our Chinese lecture when after the quiz we watched Karate Kid 4(?), the one with Will Smith’s son, with Chinese subtitles our teacher commenting the pronunciation every now and then. After the lecture I already had dinner plans at, surprise surprise again, Grape’s with our gang. Food was good as ever and evening continued at the French Concession in a small bar called Magpie, which we randomly founded. It looked so adorable with all its plants, terrace and small interior we couldn’t resist going in. Turned out the place was just opened and the owner talked with us almost the whole evening. The place is super small, only two tables inside and with us 5 persons + owner + some French couple the place was already reaching its maximum limits.

Magpie

Moving to the end of the week, Thursday, which was a lazy day for me.

First the biggest reason why I didn’t want to come out the bed. My heater (=freezer) had gone broken during the night and instead of my normal pleasure +28 degrees it had gone into +15 (SERIOUSLY). I felt like I had a frost bite in my nose when I woke up. I tried the whole morning to fight with the remote control to get my room warm again with sad results. I raised my hands up and sent sms to my landlady praying she would come and fix it before the evening.

Seriously?!?! No wonder I was sick

Second reason for not waking up: no classes today! So no need to rush from the bed. Basically I stayed home until afternoon waiting the maintenance man come and fix my heater. Also the fact that living on the 15^th floor and having the elevator out of use that day didn’t encourage me that much…

Not working

 Then it was time for my Thursday Mortini with Essi. Like said already in some previous post, Morton’s Steakhouse is having their Thursday Happy hour (5-7 PM) accompanied with mini-filet mignon sandwiches. And o’boy aren’t they good ones! 

Basically you need to buy a drink (all the martini’s are quite cheap, only 48 RMB) and with that drink you will get basically all-you-can-eat these super jammy sandwiches. Compared to normal pries, one steak of this meat costs around 800 RMB. So quite nice offer in general this MORTini. Today I ended up with Appletini and Essi with Cosmopolitan. We also ordered some blue cheese stuffed olives which were amazingly good. After the Morton’s we were both aching for something sweet so we went to the downstair’s food mall of IFC mall and found some nice bakeries.

Chocolate- Berry -cake

Strawberry-cream cheese -cake

Side comment about the Morton’s: In general the Morton’s steakhouse is quite in the upper scale of the price range. For one person 3 meal dinner with one glass of wine it is about 1400 RMB. For the prices this is actually quite weird because Morton’s is US based restaurant and everywhere else it is also US meat that is served. Here it is Australian. Of course the taxation for imported meat is EXTREMELY high here, but this doesn’t explain the prices here alone. But when looking for the people who are eating here, seems like all of them are using their company credit cards…

End of the week went by in quite traditional schemes. Being the last Friday of the month it was again time for the Finnish evening at O’Malley’s. Sadly we heard this was O’Malley’s last weekend before closure but we are sure there will be equal as nice place as this on for the upcoming meetings.

Last Guinness in O'Malley's

 Saturday weather was nice so I went walking to the Bund and Pudong for the day.

Sunday it was the Easter so me and my room mates, Sophie and Estelle, we decided to find a great Easter Brunch place and started calling through possible restaurants. Third one on our list was a match and we got a table reservation from the Nong Café, near Zhongtan park. And what a Brunch it was!?!?! We just stayed and ate 3 hours in a row there. All of us ended up with non-alcoholic brunch with 200 RMB (with free-flow alcohol 260 RMB). The brunch was absolutely awesome. Food was great and the reason why we stayed so long, we wanted to taste everything from fresh-made sashimi to the cheeses and all the lovely French delicatesies.

After brunch Sophie head for meeting a friend and Estelle home. Eeva, Hertta and others were eating on Hooter’s where I also went to see them.

Of course me and Eeva needed to take the Hooter's picture

 While most of them went to enjoy terraces I got the pleasure to play tourist guide for the next friend visiting Shanghai our main attraction being the Science and Technology Museum Fake market. 

Until next week!

Zaijian!