At first glance, I thought the Waterhouse was just another cool, minimalist hotel which abound in Shanghai. But when I looked a little closer, I saw how wrong I was.

It is a completely modern hotel but it retains all the character of the 1930′s building that houses it.

In fact, I almost walked right by it because its rough and tumble exterior doesn’t look anything like the sleek or grand entrances of most hotels.

It’s all about the old and new here. The existing concrete building was restored, an additional floor built on top and the interior furnished with mostly Scandinavian classics by Arne Jacobsen, Finn Juhl, Hans Wegner and others.

In a city that has seen so much new construction, the Waterhouse is a pretty special spot and I’d love to see more hotels like it.

My trip is going great so far. Having done all the tourist things on prior trips, I’m mostly visiting galleries and checking out a few new areas. I’ll share design notes from them soon. And here’s an interesting/kind of freaky thing that’s happening: I can’t access Twitter or Facebook here. I think I knew that about Twitter but I didn’t think Facebook was blocked too. With Facebook, it could be my internet connection (which has been kind of dodgy) but I’m not sure. The one thing I can do is post photos on Instagram, which are posting automatically to Twitter. I guess that’s the way I’ll have to update Facebook too. These days, because we’re all so connected, I sometimes forget where I am when I’m traveling. But this is a pretty strong reminder!

(Photos: The Waterhouse)