Welcome to Berlin, the hipster capital of the universe. It’s just like Brooklyn, except it’s cheaper, and there are slightly less Americans. If you planning a visit, don heavy-framed glasses and get your business cards printed up. The more slashes after your name, the better. Try: “writer/traveler/curator/designer/dreamer” for starters.
BREAKFAST: that‘s Frühstück to you. Take yours hale & hearty over Der Spiegel at the classic Cafe Einstein (pictured) or Literature House. (Thanks to travel writer Swissing Around for this brilliant breakfast tip!)
MEMORIAL: The memorial dedicated to the Murdered Jews of Europe by Peter Eisenmann is sobering, graphic and disorientating. During our visit we observed parents beninly looking on as their young children ran giggling through the ‘maze’; and a blonde being told off for skipping merrily between the blocks. #WhatWereTheyThinking? For details check the website.
ICH LIEBE GREEN: If the weather is good, hit one of Berlin‘s many green spaces that sprout wild and luscious throughout the city. Lustgarten is right in the middle of tourist mayhem, but we prefer biking through the lovely Tiergarten (it also welcomes sun-loving nudists!)…or take a stroll along the Spree…
ART ZONE: Looking into the window of a Mitte art gallery a middle-aged American guy enthuses, “This is my kind of art” at a knitted sculpture of Superman crashed into a wall… Get started with a chilled art crawl and coffee hop of the galleries in Mitte… Check out the latest shows on SugarHigh or create a hit-list with this gallery hit-list by BangBangBerlin. The free app by the Collecionist Art Guide is also pretty decent.
At the Barn Cafe all the waiters had Antipodean accents. They do a mean cup of coffee and some of the best sandwiches we’ve eaten. Ever. Anywhere. Too bad we didn’t have room for cake.
EAST SIDE GALLERY: A crush of elderly tourists obstruct a mural of Reagan and Gorbachev in a passionate embrace. Blocking my view: a cane wielding gent in his late 70’s wearing a New York Yankees cap, I note the blue veins running down the back of his elderly ears. The longest remaining stretch of the Berlin Wall is one of those ‘must-do’s. Hire a bike – it‘s more fun that way.
COFFEE: In Bonanza Coffee Heroes a near religious calm prevails as two hipsters work their magic over the Synesso Cyncra coffee machine; like priests in a pulpit or DJs at the deck. Note, seating is limited to outdoor benches and perching on bags of coffee beans. Great for a perk-me-up or refresher after a trip to Sunday‘s Maur Park flea market where gems spotted include vintage crockery sets and a child’s pair of green suede lederhosen.
MUSEUM: “I didn’t quite catch that.” Eerie, sad, kitsch and surreal; re-live the Lives of Others at the slightly-down-at-heel Stasi Museum where unfortunate East German citizens previously found themselves “detained for the clarification of facts”. An ominous charge if we ever heard one. Displays range from watch-operated spy cameras to bugged bird-houses and human ‘smell samples’ of potential dissidents. Get the background by reading Anna Fundar’s hypnotic and excellent Stasiland.
DINNER: We can’t decide what’s nicer, Da Baffi, a cheap, cute-as-a-button Italian restaurant in Wedding or old school elegance at Renger Patzch in Schoenberg. (We road tested these excellent tips thanks to Foodie in Berlin, who also suggested HBC in Mitte for the atmosphere – we’d put it on the hit-list for drinks and hi-jinx. ) Other ideas include the Shy Chef, eating dinner with strangers at a secret supper club, or pop-up, food events staged by the likes of the Agora Collective.
DRINKING: In the dimly-lit Hotel Bar a young woman sits on the floor beside me and starts eating an enormous Lebanese cucumber she pulls from her bag. Meanwhile a gently smiling bartender carefully snuffs and replaces the candles and adjusts a humble glass jars of garden flowers on my table. This innocuous watering hole in Kreuzberg hides an cheerful interior that can border on the frenzied. Hipster crowd, cheap drinks, great music,…. Low-Fi buzz meets gemütlichkeit. The owners also offerrooms (elsewhere) that are available for rent on request according to an ephemeral selection process.
Welcome to Berlin: echoing a cabaret act from the 20′s, enjoy Berliner Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester, he and his dancing girls await you…
Shoreditch, loads of graf including this little squirrel beastie by Belgian artist Roa (Image by HWL)
The neighbourhood: Tell us about it.
Shoreditch – still killing it after all these years. The recent regeneration has only made it better and more approachable, if not a little more self-conscious. Natural home to the hipster (don’t wear socks if you want to blend in). Train carriages on top of warehouses, chalk stripe suits with pink shirts, the creative bourgeoise, a constant waft of sweet tandoori, with a layer of graffiti on top.
Hang it all at the Eames Room, at the Boundary Hotel in London.
The Hotel: What’s the concept?
Design hotel on the financial fringes, catering to media and creative industries and the odd discerning City exec. part of the Conran group it builds on the successful example set by Shoreditch House without all the bells and whistles. Good value when compared with the standard bearers of London hoteliery.
The Eileen Gray Room, the risk here is going out and coming home to find that Le Corbusier has decided to paint all over it. Not much of a risk, given the circs…
The crowd: What’s the vibe?
Relaxed and cool, maybe a touch Parisienne…
Tell us about the rooms:
Room was massive… It was one of the corner suites, the ‘Shaker’. Standard rooms are still pretty good… Bigger than normal.
Get back to your modernist roots in the Bauhaus Room at the Boundary Hotel.
The Hotel: What is it ideal for in the context of London?
Brilliant business hotel given proximity to the City. On your days off you have something more exciting than the West End to explore. Great little pubs close by like the Owl and Pussycat and the George & Dragon. Voluminous shopping opportunities at Boxpark, Spitalfields and Brick Lane… and just along Redchurch St there are some fun boutiques like APC, Catch & Release and Aubin & Wills.
The Hoxton branch of the White Cube gallery is within strolling-while-whistling distance….Here shown a previous exhibition by Marcus Harvey featuring a mohawked Churchill and a portrait of Thatcher constructed from an assortment of cast objects, including sex toys and corn cobs. (Image by HWL)
The clubs have become a little ‘bridge & tunnel’ (like the lower east side), so best avoided on weekends or stick to the pubs and bars. Oh, and have a beer with Tracey Emin at the Golden Heart… if she’s not there you can enjoy some of her original work in the loo.
Breakfast bacon bap at the Albion – they do a decent light supper and scrummy afternoon tea too.
Pluses: What did you love?
The food is incredible… the Albion caf is a great way to start the morning with porridge and prunes or a bacon bap. The formal French restaurant downstairs is simply awe inspiring… the lapin a la moutarde is still fresh in my memory. Not to be eaten every night as you will rue the lack of a gym, but don’t leave without venturing downstairs.
Mind your silver plates and go the chaud lapin at the Boundary…
Minuses: Where could it improve?
The reception and entrance are quite small and not that awe inspiring, although functional. I would say a gym, but there are plenty of Boris Bikes around…
Tips: do you have any?
Take the east London line down to Peckham Rye and visit the park and Lordship Lane.
Our drawing of our Loft Room on the 2nd floor at the Michelberger Hotel. For the last couple of years we have been drawing our favourite hotel rooms, and we now have a nice collection of Moleskin Japanese albums… (Image by HWL)
The Michelberger Hotel in Berlin has been on our hipster hotel hit list for a few years now. Finally, we had the chance to go! A Leonard Cohen soundtrack and retro glasses of well-priced prosecco in the hotel’s candle-lit bar kicked-off the perfect sojourn in Berlin…
Wise words in the lobby of the Michelberger Hotel, Berlin. (Image by HWL)
The neighbourhood: Looking on a tourist map of Berlin you feel like the Michelberger might be a little bit out-of-the-way – but not at all. The location offers all the transport links, from trains to bike paths, to get you into the heart of the action (naked sun-bathing in the Tiergarten, jostling it out with the tourists at Brandenburg Gate, strolling the bijou boutiques in Mitte or tagging hapless passers-by according to your tastes). But more importantly in Berlin it’s the suburbs where the good stuff is happening – so if you want to eat, drink and make merry, you’re in close proximity to the emerging areas of Kreuzberg and Neukölln. Note that East Side Gallery – the largest remaining painted stretch of the Berlin Wall is just around the corner.
The Clever One – an example of the Luxe room category at the Michelberger Hotel – has a saucy librarian aesthetic. Now to take off those heavy frames and shake-out that hair.
The Hotel:The Michelberger weds a bohemian aesthetic and happening vibe with a friendly welcome (OK, so it’s less of a wedding duo and more of a love triangle). It seems to have taken the best of those 20-something travelling experiences (camaraderie, sociable communal areas, friendly service) and combined them with the best of hotel living – clean rooms, fresh linen and a more sophisticated design aesthetic. The cool bar area is great at any time of the day – if you find yourself knackered at the end of a big day in Berlin and can’t convince your feet to take you back out over the threshold, there’s no shame in spending a night in. (Well, only a little bit.)
Boomshakalakaboom: the exterior of the Michelberger Hotel in Berlin (Image by HWL)
What we loved: The creative atmosphere, the playful design aesthetic, the friendliness of the staff. Late check-outs on request for night performers such as burlesque dancers/DJs/musos/ and other creative slash types. While we didn’t take advantage of them we thought the free daily activities (eg: Sunday outing to the Mauerpark Flea Market) were a nice touch for travellers in the mood for company and hassle-free entertainment.
Paper lantern: while you can start the day in the breakfast room, we preferred a quiet coffee and pastry in the cafe/bar area…a very chilled way to wake up. (Image by HWL)
Minuses/Room to improve:Rooms on the first floor may be exposed to some bar noise; some room categories (Loft, Band) have mezzanine sleeping areas accessed by precarious and narrow staircases – not recommended for the non-mobile, the non-thin or if you’re planning to get drunk a lot. (In the latter case, we recommend crashing out on the day bed on the ground floor.) Mezzanine rooms are warm and could get rather hot in summer – if you of the sensitive ilk, pack ear-plugs so you can sleep with the windows open without being woken by traffic and assorted merry pranksters of the night. While the cleaning staff get our full sympathy (imagine lugging cleaning implements up those teeny stairs) some rooms could do with a little more maintenance – the odd scuff mark removed etc – to keep things looking sharp.
Bunking down with the roadies in one of the big band rooms. Both these and Loft Rooms feature mezzanines.
Tips: Ask for a room on the third or second floor for more light, better views, and more distance from the bar/street noise. Those facing the main road will get the sun in the morning. Transport enthusiasts and urban planners will enjoy watching the stream and interaction of pedestrians, cyclists, tramways, the U-Bahn and S-Bahn lines and street traffic. The hotel has two excellent maps at reception featuring their personal guide to the city – one of cultural sites; one of bars and restaurants. We recommend you pick one up.
Hello sunshine: we advocate a Loft Room with a window desk for anyone with a transport spotting related compulsion. (Image by HWL)
Mornin’ Sunshine: room with balcony and wooden shutters. (Image by HWL)
The neighbourhood: Predictably Shoreditch House is located bang in the middle of Shoreditch – that means you are looking at a semi-industrial landscape with a trademark EINE graffiti wall on one side and the light railway line on the other. It’s glamour, London-style, but on the upside you are very much in Hipster-Central, near a patch of excellent cafes such as Terence Conran’s Albion Cafe and the rustic Leila’s Shop; art galleries like the Rocket Gallery in the Tea Building & White Cube (Hoxton Square branch), street art galleries like Pure Evil and the Village Underground and the cool shops of the surrounding streets and Brick Lane. There’s great street art everywhere, too.
A rather forceful looking ’4′ at Shoreditch House. (Image by HWL)
What’s On Offer/The Crowd: Shoreditch House is part of the growing SOHO House empire – it is essentially a ‘member’s club’ for London-based media types which offers multi-level indie entertainment (bar, restaurant, cinema etc) including a much loved and photographed rooftop pool and bar. They host a swag of invitation-only media events such as book and film launches, which attract a nice crowd of creative types every night of the week. Basically if you work in media in London there is no escaping Shoreditch house. The good news is, the hotel is open for everyone, and if you are visiting London it’s your chance to mix with a cool crowd of locals at a very reasonable price (for London, that is).
London calling: the devil is in the details, at Shoreditch House. (Image by HWL)
The Hotel:It’s a good place to stay if you are in London for work and your meetings are on the East End. It’s anything but corporate but it is well set-up with a lot of common areas (think football tables; many bars etc) and is a great way to get people to come to you for a change – Londoners find it hard to refuse a rooftop drink on a sunny day. It’s also nice for a weekend if you are planning to hang out in Shoreditch, Dalston or London Fields (which is where things are these days in London).
A heady mix of cocktails and the famous ‘Gherkin’ on the fabulous roof-top of Shoreditch House.
Pluses: The bedroom decor is a success – think ‘institutional’ with a subdued ‘maritime’ theme –grey vertical wood panels, school chairs, white tiles. While this sounds like a very bad idea on paper, it works, and creates a rather minimalist, yet warm and cosy atmos. The individual balconies are great, and so are the large internal wooden shutters with which you can play to create your own personal light show. All in all, it’s rather upbeat, and very comfortable.
The public spaces – the downstairs bar is beautiful and the rooftop one, well… it’s spectacular.
Decisions, decisions… An understated slightly salty maritime theme pervades at Shoreditch House, in London. (Image by HWL)
Minuses:I wasn’t a great fan of the overly warm and OTT welcome (including hugs, or was it an arm squeeze?) and detailed instructions as how to fill my bags with the complementary beauty products. (Yes I have been in hotel before! – mind you it was a rather nice package of Cowshed stuff and I did take them home, as instructed, thank you!). But one can hardly complain about warm welcomes.
Shoreditch House: a nice mix of mod cons and homely touches, such as hot water bottles and wooly blankets. (Image by HWL)
The Vibe: Staying there reminded me of French artist Philippe Ramette’s ‘Device for Becoming the Hero of your Own Life’ artwork (a sort of wearable harness that plays a soundtrack for your life – to see it, scroll down on this annoying web page) – you have been cast in a film where you are a cool urban creative with an exciting network of cool urban creative friends signing up book deals or generally going somewhere. I suspect it can be a bit tiring, sometimes, and not always relaxing if you are feeling a bit low.
Anyone for mind games? Playtime at Shoreditch House in London.
Luminous Disks: Daniel Buren’s installation at Monumenta 2012 in Paris. (Image by HWL)
First impressions of Daniel Buren‘s Excentrique(s) Travail In Situ installation at the Grand Palais for the annual Monumenta show were ho-hum. The whole set up felt a little bit …well…crafty…and not in a good way. (We might define ‘bad crafty’ as, say, a pointless box given a decoupage make-over using left-over magazines from a doctor’s office, and not in an ironic way.)
Coloured spheres: Monumenta in Paris. (Image by HWL)
The artist who has, ahem, earned his stripes creating site specific art work, such as the Les Deux Plateaux in Palais-Royal, Paris, has created a false ceiling of transparent, umbrella-like disks that form a sub-level beneath the glass roof of the Grand Palais. The effect is immediately frustrating – the visitor is largely robbed of one of the venue’s best features – a superb sense of space, both vast and grandiose. The summer show is not called Monumenta for nothing – last year’s installation, Leviathan, by Anish Kapoor was a hella whopper and the better for it. In contrast, Buren’s work feels bitsy, fussy, and a little bit twee; and then the sun came out.
The cellophane effect: Daniel Buren at the Grand Palais, Paris. (Image by HWL)
With the lights on, so to speak, the show went from being pretty naff to being kind of fun.The 377 coloured disks create a kaleidoscope that reflect and play with the light pouring from the roof-top. In this case, Buren has created something of an Alice-in-Wonderland effect; we find ourselves to be miniature pieces inside the kaleidoscope. Moving through the work creates new vistas and interactions with forms, colour and shadow.
Light Dancers: coloured disks reminiscent of crazy casino carpet; there’s no clocks here either so you’ll have to tell the time by the sun. (Image by HWL)
In many ways, it’s a cheap trick. In other ways, it’s a reminder that simple ideas can be the best ones. Pity about those trademark stripey pillars – they feel clunky and out of place in this ballroom of light. Our tip: go when the sun is shining. Exhibition runs until June 21, 2012. For details see here.
Grand Palais: Daniel Buren’s coloured spheres mushroom below the vast canopy of the Grand Palais in Paris. (Image by HWL)
Check out this video documenting graffiti artist Tilt‘s recent installation in a Marseilles hotel room. To find out more about the project, there’s a nifty Q & A with Tilt in the New York Times…. To Book a room, contact Au Vieux Panier. Tilt’s ‘Panic Room’ will set you back €135. If bubble letters give you nightmares why not spend the night in purgatory in the ‘Mass Confusion’ room instead? Nuff said, the video speaks for itself.
Last year the Taipei Fine Arts Museum in Taiwan held an exhibition of Ai WeiWei’s work entitled ‘Absent’ referencing the artist’s detention by the Chinese authorities and his subsequent inability to attend his own show. ‘Ai Weiwei: Interlacing’ currently showing at the Jeu de Paume, in Paris, acts as a retrospective of the artist’s work which, in his continued absence, verges on a memorial. It creates a portrait of an artist as strong as he is fragile; as mischievous as he is serious; as alive as he is mortal.
Disobey!: Stencil art of the artist Ai Weiwei spotted in Lyon, France, during the artist’s detention. (Image by HWL)
A solo show at the Jeu de Paume is the highest accolade Paris can grant to a photographer. In this context, the show is a bit of a stretch, not only does this multi-faceted artist not fit in to the narrow category of the art form but photography – let’s face it – is not his strongest suite. As an artist, blogger and ‘Twitterer’ Ai is a prolific photographer; he uses the medium to document (and share) the ephemera of daily life (meals eaten, art works in creation, travels taken etc) and as a means of documenting the process or outcome of his work. Photography provides the ‘interlacing’ between his many projects and media; in this sense the show reminds us of the power of this medium to bear witness. Case in point: Ai was repeatedly invited by the authorities to construct a studio in Shanghai. Finally, he concedes but as soon as the building is completed, it is declared illegal. The building is torn down, all evidence of the site is removed and finally the field is ploughed-up and returned to farm land. The only evidence of this studio ever being part of reality (as opposed to a Kafkaesque nightmare) are Ai’s photographs.
When the sleepy city of Tunis kicked off the Arabic Spring, little did we know what was to come: both for the better and worse. Hence, we lead in with a video collaboration from El Seed, the Tunisian-born, calligraphy graffiti artist… from little things, big things grow. (See the end of this post for a video interview with El Seed on his work and the Tunisian uprising.)
Tunis: mural in the medina
The rather dusty city of Tunis sprawls along the coast encompassing the pretty seaside villages and suburbs of Carthage, Sidi Bou Saïd, La Marsa, La Gammarth and La Goulette. Navigating between them requires a reasonable amount of patience for traffic jams. (Taking the train is probably more fun…) We’ve listed a day’s worth of eating and drinking and a few arty spots, the rest is up to you. See here for Hotels We Love in Tunis.
EATING/DRINKING:
Brunch: We’re not for the international hotel chain, but let’s give credit where credit is due. Brunching outdoors beneath the sunshades and watching the sun sparkle on the bay is a delightful way to start the day. For this reason, we give the thumbs up toMövenpick Hotel Gammarth for its French-style brunch buffet.
Tough start to the day @ Mövenpick Hotel Gammarth, Tunisia
Istanbul: an east-meets-west mixed tape that splices the grandeur of Paris and the madness of NYC via a Bangkok traffic jam and a late night kebab. Click through to read about our Perfect Day in H’ipstanbul. (Image by HWL)
Wow, we’re not even sure how that happened. This blog started out as a way of writing about places we’d been, places we stayed and cool things we saw along the way…For our 100th post, we got to thinking about our art and travel highlights…Click on the pictures to go through to the original story. Thanks to everyone who has read this blog, followed this blog, contributed to this blog, befriended us on Facebook or just stumbled across it randomly while looking for something weird (to the person who – bizarrely – came to us after Googling ‘portable sex swing’, we hope you eventually found what you were looking for, albeit elsewhere).
With love from us,
X
An icon of modernist architecture, the Hotel Le Corbusier is just one of the drawcards for Marseille…other lures being the calanques, French rap, bouillabaisse and a sense of underlying anarchy… Our review of one of the world’s great hotels. (Image by HWL)
For reasons obscure & too lengthy to go into, we ended up at the graffiti event Meeting of Styles in Chicago. We love the windy city for its unique combination of great architecture and very, very friendly folk. (Image by HWL)
We will Rock You: Our room at The Ace in New York City had its own guitar & record player. Click through for more pics of this hipster hotel of the moment. (Drawing by HWL)
We got along to the FAME graffiti festival in Grottaglie, a working town in Puglia, Italy that lures the Graffiti A-List with the promise of blank walls. Our suggested itinerary combines stumbling around in abandoned semi-industrial zones and swanning around the coast in search of fine eats. Mural by Nunca. (Image by HWL)
The Urbn Hotel in Shanghai was our favourite hotel of 2011; in a city of dystopian skyscrapers it offers a slice of life on a human scale. Click through for our review.(Image by HWL)
We’ve seen a lot of great art over the last few years…but this recent show by Danish & French yarn bombing types was a highlight. The Knitted Stag is by French artists Art Oriente Objet. (Image by HWL)
The Krafft Hotel in Basel, Switzerland, must be one of the loveliest places we’ve ever stayed: warm, elegant, cosy, classic. Help yourself to a cup of tea and watch the green watery folds of the Rhine wash by. (Drawing by HWL)
We were lucky enough to score an invite to a show of revolutionary artists organised by the French Embassy in Tunis. Tunisia kicked-started the then- Arab Spring & was the first to hold democratic elections. Being there we sensed two conflicting emotions: hope and resignation. The Made in Tunisia series by photographer Hichem Driss’ hints at a complex populace…Click through to read the story.
A pocket of Moorish-flavoured wonder that is Seville, Spain. When the mercury hit 40 degrees (that’s 104 to the luddites), the traditional ice-creams at Heladeria Artesana La Fiorentina really came into their own.
Arles! A small Roman town in the South of France, beloved by bullfighters, Hemingway and Christian Lacroix… Every summer it hosts Les Rencontres d’Arles, a veritable Kir Royale that combines the biggest names in photography and delightfully relaxed sightseeing…(providing you don’t visit in the opening week!). The Real Story of Superheros by Mexican-born, NYC-based photographer Paulino Cardozo, featured in 2011. Click through to our review.
Napoli: While Rome burns, Naples crumbles. We loved its fading beauty, pert volcanoes, fantastic food and lovely, lovely people. Happily, we don’t live there given their sporadic garbage collection problem. (Image by HWL)
We can dream, can’t we? In our future lives when we morph, butterfly-like, into fully-fledged artists, we’ll be applying here… The Fogo Island Artist Residency, in the Shipping News territory of Newfoundland, Canada. The artist studios were designed by Canadian-born, Norway-based architect Todd Saunders; a hotel is on its way.
Our perfect day in Shanghai revolves around a couple of great coffee stops, an arty jaunt, a local quirk or two and a place to debrief over drinks and perhaps carry on into the night. Join the dots…
COFFEE: What looks like a short stroll on a Shanghai street map often turns out to be a long and charmless polluted slog punctuated by construction sites …for this reason; we suggest that all outings should encompass a coffee stop either for refuelling or as a goal of its own right.
Stormy Cafe: An indie slice of counter-Shanghai this tiny joint is possibly our favourite cafe-slash-bar in the city. We chilled out to Bob Marley, met a friendly dog and observed an interesting series of people coming in and out with intriguing props. (Or maybe that’s just the absinthe talking?) A laid-back, if grungy, port in the storm. (Lane 229, No 1 Danshui Rd, nr Fuxing Rd.)
Indie port in a storm, Shanghai (Image by HWL)
Q’s Coffee: Yunnan coffee, sweet treats and Wi-Fi situated in a tiny wooden cabin with a big glass front in the old school maze that is the trendy shopping zone of Taikang Lu’s Tianzifang. If you’re no good at map reading, just walk around and around in circles until you stumble onto it. (15, Lane 155, Jian Guo Zhong Lu.)
Amokka Cafe: This French Concession cafe knows its way around a coffee machine and offers decent lunch bits – sandwiches, soup, risotto etc – at reasonable prices. The more atmospheric second floor has a very chilled Scandi-Asiatic vibe. Take advantage of the free Wi-Fi. (Next door you’ll find bread and assorted take-out baked treats at the Antipodeon style Baker & Spice, 195 Anfu Lu.)
Running Amok(kka) in Shanghai (Image by HWL)
Citizen Cafe: Judging by the crowd this French Concession cafe strikes a chord with foreign freelance types who come to hunker down over lattes and laptops, dreams and schemes. We like the Citizen Cafe for its good coffee, cheerful service, cosy ambiance and Euro-friendly edibles. The small yet more-ish pesto pasta is a fail-safe choice if you’ve overdosed on dumplings.
Embrace comrades in arms at the Citizen Cafe, Shanghai (Image by HWL)
ART:
Rockbund Art Museum (RAM): Shanghai’s first private art museum in a historic building on the Bund was recently given a revamp by British architect David Chipperfield. In our view, the museum is the most likely of the city’s institutions to put on a reliably good show. While you’re in the hood, you may like to check out the high calibre commercial galleries nearby such as Shanghai Gallery of Art (at 3 on the Bund) and 18 Gallery at Bund 18.
"At 70 I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the line," an older, wiser (and more hairy) Confucius as imagined by artist Zhang Huan, at Rock Bund Museum (Image by HWL)
M50 (50 Moganshan Rd, Shanghai) is Shanghai’s response to Beijing’s more famous Factory 798, it is comprised of dozens of galleries and artist studios scattered around a series of dimly lit and circuitous warehouses in a disused mill that, so far, has escaped development. (Digression: While bad art is not exclusive to Shanghai, it must be said that with so much material to work with, it seems especially easy to create bad art work in this city… If you want to DIY your own crappy art follow this simple recipe: take a handful of Mao and a dash of cash, add pop colours, and stir. If you are feeling adventurous, whack in a military theme as well. All this to say that, the quality of the art on display can be hit and miss.)
Party of One: M50 art enclave Shanghai (Image by HWL)
Brighten up: cool lights, warehouse ambiance at M50 Shanghai (Image by HWL)
On a positive note, galleries we liked include: Gallery55s and the oddly named Brut Cake specialising in ceramics, recycled homewares and gifts; the rather obscure Dearco, OV Gallery, the photography gallery M97 the Island 6 Collective and M50 veteran Eastlink. It’s also worth browsing the M50 In Out Shop (105-1, Blg 3, 50 Moganshan Rd) for arty tomes, including souvenir-friendly publications like Wrinkles of the City: Shanghai by French street artist J.R (see video at top of post) and Phantom Shanghai by photographer Greg Girard (see below).
MoCA: Situated in Renmim Park, the programming here can be hit and miss, but it’s worth seeing what’s on, if only to gauge the temperature of Shanghai’s art scene. Plus it’ll give you an excuse to meander around the park where you are likely to be amused by various people doing unusual things. (The average Shanghai apartment is on the small side so locals head to the parks to do tai chi, practise a loud brass musical instrument, work through a new ballroom dancing step, fly a kite or cast a rod into an ornamental water feature. On weekends parents with unmarried kids set up impromptu stalls where they advertise their offspring in a sort of marriage market.) After a dose of art and some good old-fashioned people watching in the park, take a coffee stop at Barbarossa. This cafe has lovely views onto ponds and landscaped greenery and an eclectic menu; light dishes we enjoyed here include the Hainanese chicken rice and the Moroccan-style orange cake. Note: the Shanghai Art Museum is free and also within the park’s confines, however, we struggle to really recommend it…but the gallery cafe Kathleen’s 5 does offer an amazing view over the city.
Barabossa cafe: mean cuppa coffee, lovely water view (Image by HWL)
Who goes there? Renmin Park: beware of pyjama-wearing tai-chi-ers popping out from behind the bushes (Image by HWL)
SHANGHAI-IST DRIFT:
The French Concession evokes images of colonial buildings, faded grandeur and avenues lined with plane trees…but the reality is a little more prosaic. Still, this is certainly the best enclave for eating, drinking and shopping on a more human scale. Shops we quite liked included: the eco-aware Urban Tribe – their sweet pleated scarves and interesting ceramics make for reasonably priced souvenirs/gifts; Mayumi Sato for quirky girl cashmere sweaters and Japanese tailored lovelies and the rather more upmarket Initial Fashion for their interesting, artsy collection. For a custom cobbler, locals recommend Yanye Handmade Shoes, but note that an order takes 2-4 weeks to complete (1363 Fuxing Zhong Lu, by Baoqing Lu 复兴中路1363号，近宝庆路 Tel: 131 6270 5506). Reading materials: you’ll find foreign language books at the rather ordinary Garden Books but we suggest 1984 for coffee, overall underground ambiance and lazing cats (the black gate is always closed, so don’t panic, you will be let in).
Yu (hoo) gardens.... (Image by HWL)
TOURISTIC VENTURES:
Yu Gardens: Shanghai is a city of 23 million people and zero touristic blockbusters – there, we’ve said it. If you’d like to dip into some ye olde worlde Shanghai try the 16th century Yu Gardens. (Here we score zero points for originality.) It is less of a garden and more a complex of pavilions and temples cunningly formed around rockeries, water features and bridges designed to replicate mountains, lakes etc. Carp abound. The whole get-up seems made for the amateur photographer and if you are so foolish to visit on the weekend, you will need to battle it out with thousands for a viewpoint. Nb: claustrophobes should avoid the surrounding (and somewhat ghastly) Yu Bazaar as much as poss. – it is packed. Afterwards, reflect on the inter-balance of the elements (light and shadow, water and stone), over tea on the top floor of the Old Shanghai Teahouse (385 Middle Fangbang Rd), which is charming despite its overt touristyness.
This photo is of no consequence: we just like it. Somewhere near West Fangbang Rd. (Image by HWL)
Bird & Insect Market: Is there anything better than standing around comparing the size and thrust of one’s own cricket? If you’re ever dreamt of owning your own stable here’s your chance to collect a collection of fighting grasshoppers and all the necessary accoutrements. Afterwards, meander around the surrounding laneways and sniff out some fragments of old Shanghai. (South Xizang Rd, nr West Fangbang Rd.)
Hutong & bike near the bird & insect market, Shanghai
Taikang Lu’s Tianzifang: a self-consciously preserved enclave of laneway shop houses that nonetheless make for enjoyable exploration. A kind of one stop shop for eating/drinking/shopping and last minute snaffling of souvenirs. In addition to Q’s Coffee mentioned above, we like Cafe Dan for coffee and basic Japanese food in atmospheric digs at the top of a long rickety set of stairs.
DRINK?: Don’t mind if we do…
Mint: Glam and lofty It bar Mint is has an amazing view over Shanghai and is popular with the usual suspects. Dress hot for the bouncers and, assuming you get in, keep your eyes peeled for faux bi-curious models dancing on the bar, but steer clear of disillusioned ex-pat architects washed up from Dubai.
A crappy day can't hide the overall weirdness of Shanghai's skyline, best enjoyed over drinks & up high... (Image by HWL)
Cloud Nine: We’re not fans of the chain hotel, but Cloud Nine bar on the 87th floor at the Hyatt offers a brilliant view of the Bund skyline. Mix it with a (pretty reasonably priced) cocktail and drink it in, but don’t come for the crowd. Note that Andreas Gursky aficionados may recognise the atrium.
And now for something a little bit different: Also check out the chilled Japanese sochu bar Mokkos; Southern Cross for a quiet cocktail – BYO crowd; or the French wine bar Le Cafe des Stagiaires for a cosy verre de rouge.
