*These Strawberry Elderflower Champagne Spritzers are light, sparkling, sweet, and floral! A delicious fresh strawberry simple syrup is paired with elderflower liqueur and topped off with champagne.*

It’s early Sunday morning here in Shanghai as I’m writing this and I can’t sleep because jet lag so I thought I’d pop in to give you a little update on the trip so far! We’ve only been here for about 36 hours but I can say, even already, this city is awesome!

We landed to a beautiful bright red sunset on Friday evening, met up with my brother Grant, our tour guide, at the airport, and immediately headed out to one of his small neighborhood restaurants for a bit of a Chinese feast. It was cool to see him tear through the menu – a many-paged book – and point out item after item. Soon, the table was loaded with pork belly and cauliflower stir fry, cumin-scented beef, a cold marinated cucumber salad, sweet and sour pork, and the largest plate of dumplings I’ve ever seen! We headed to bed shortly after with very happy tummies.

Saturday was all about the walking! We took off early and just didn’t stop! We explored Grant’s neighborhood, the French Concession, and breakfasted at a very delicious boulangerie. We strolled through street after street, taking in the local scene and stopping in at shops and markets along the way. We hit up the local fabric market – an enormous bustling building of stalls and very vocal salespeople – to have ordered a custom jacket for Adam. Finally, we walked along the Bund and took in the view of Shanghai’s skyline, with a couple of the tallest buildings in the world. We ended the day at a Japanese Izakaya restaurant, where we enjoyed all sorts of tapas-style dishes: fried squid tentacles, pork belly, chicken cartilage, salmon belly, and beef noodles, just to name a few. We’ll see where the coming week takes us, but I’ve got a feeling that we have many more adventures to experience and foods to enjoy!

In the meantime, I wanted to share the recipe for this exceedingly simple and delicious strawberry elderflower cocktail. Because happy Spring!! This bubbly drink is perfect for a warm evening or springtime soirée. It all starts with an easy strawberry simple syrup – sweet, fruity, and a lovely bright pink. The syrup is mixed up with an elderflower liqueur, and the bright, floral flavors play perfectly with the sweet strawberry. A generous pour of champagne is the perfect finish! This light, sparkling drink is sweet and sophisticated – I hope you love it!