Moving In

We spent the first month of our time in Shanghai in a serviced apartment, which was a lot like living in a one bedroom hotel room. A great view of the Huangpu River on a clear day (see above) and the constant sound from one of the many construction sites on Shanghai's newest metro line below.

So after as much looking around as our busy travel schedules allowed, we found an apartment. It's actually a very nice apartment, very new and twice the size of our London place. But we hated the furniture, so we negotiated with the landlord to have it taken away and in we moved. Six suitcases and not much else, rattling around our new home.

This was of course well before our container arrived via the 'slow boat to China' (literally), so we took the obligatory trip to Ikea with the primary objective of buying a mattress and bed for the guest bedroom so we could use it before our own bed arrived. No problem.

So we wandered through Ikea, chose a bedframe and a mattress, and talked to the very helpful staff member who said 'no problem'. The bedframe would be waiting for us downstairs...the mattress would be delivered in 7 days. (what!!!??)

So that was clearly not going to work. Trying to sleep during the 8th month of pregnancy is challenging under the best of circumstances. Doing it on the wooden slats of a bedframe was not an option. So we asked him to show us what they had 'in stock' that very minute that we could leave with.

Which is how we came to spend the first week of our new lives sleeping on a 3" mattress pad across the wooden slats of a bedframe.