Beautiful Pottery

Last week I went to a famous "art street", here in Shanghai, to see what the Chinese artists were up to, overall it was not my cup of tea, a lot of suggestive (sex sells I guess) oil paintings that were meant to be provocative but ended up being uninteresting to me.  After dashing in and out of various galleries to view some art I decided to seek out the pottery "art".  I do love a good ceramic bowl!  While most of the items were out of my price range I did find these two lovely mugs, fired with a natural sand that turns bright colors when fired in intense heat.

The inside is as beautiful as the outside, perhaps even more so.  The inside of the red mug has blue specks, which is difficult to see but you can see the inside of the brown mug with peacock blue and yellow spots! I love the gently curved lip, reminding me of a flower and the thinness of the pottery attests to it's quality, in my opinion.  A set of 8 would be nice, however I have many mugs.  The four mugs from Tuscany that my sister bought me. My first handcrafted mug that I bought for my first apartment(yes it has a chip, but I can't let it go) Four hand thrown mugs from a craft fair in NY bought many years ago that I could not live without. And I am sure the list goes on.  I know I should not buy another mug, but you may be able to agree with me, these two new ones were much too beautiful to leave behind.

They're here!!!

On Saturday Dec. 3rd, 2011 Tonys' sister came to visit us for a week in Shanghai.  Here is a chronicle of their journey.

Mary and Margaret have arrived!

 And looking quite good after 14 hours of flying in a steel tube.
We got them to the apartment and then headed straight to the holiday party in our building.

 Then on to our favorite restaurant, Bella Napoli for a light bite and then to bed.

Although Margaret ended up on the couch it looks like they both did get some shut eye.

 Our first "street food" for breakfast - yummy Jiangbing.  Or as I lovingly call them Chinese Breakfast Burrito!

 I took the ladies to the wet market as I needed some eggs.

 Then a nice long walk around Shanghai.  We stopped at the Peace Hotel and went inside to see the beautifully restored lobby and small museum.

 One day we headed down to an area called Taikang Lu, this is a small neighborhood of renovated lane homes - the bottom floor houses cafes, and small boutique stores.  Residents live on the 2nd and 3rd floors. It's a very unique and charming area.  We had a nice brunch and coffee while sitting outside as it was so pleasant in the sun.

Margaret was excited for her double cup of coffee - she had been slightly disappointed in the size of a double when in Spain just 2 months before and she was skeptical that she would get a nice big cup of coffee in far off China but...........

as you can see she got a jumbo cup filled with her life giving brew!

This is a cute little bakery in the area, I showed the shop keeper my id with my last name on it - Mollica - and then asked for a discount.  No luck.

Here they are on the Bund.

And now Beijing! Left Monday morning returned on a Tuesday evening! It was a misty snowy day as we walked over to the Forbidden City.

Next stop - The Great Wall.  It was so pretty with the snow.

A visit to a traditional Temple in Beijing.

And now back in Shanghai, here we are in Yuyuan Gardens.

We went to the other side of the river to take in the view of the beautiful old buildings of Shanghai.

And our last night together taking in the lights of the famous modern skyline of Shanghai,

..............as well as the old classic buildings built in the early 1900's.  A wonderful trip to have with two wonderful people.