On Day Two in Shanghai, we visited the
Shanghai Museum, an amazing (free!) museum full of themed galleries (scrolls, bronzes, ceramic, coins, etc.). My absolute favorite was the gallery showing costumes of China's minorities. The needlework was jaw-droppingly beautiful.
Crowded, of course...full of school children, some of whom came dressed in ethnic costumes. Here are the boys...
And the girls. Cute!
A street scene...note the laundry drying out the windows...
Hello Kitty--she's everywhere.
The
Pearl Tower.
Then we went to Yuyuan Market and Bazaar. There actually is a beautiful garden here, but we got there too late to go in.
Oh yes I did!!! Starbucks, yum!
These are some of the buildings in the bazaar area. DQ and Starbucks were there, as were many people.
Many many people. This is a famous zigzag bridge that we're all crossing.
Shanghai, old and new.
Love all of the dumpling baskets piled up in this restaurant window (also love the sign!).
We all had dinner at this famous restaurant.
A store where I actually bought something--little notebooks, of course.
We took a nighttime cruise on the Huangpu River. Every building was lit up. That's the Pearl Tower again.
All of the boats were lit up, too.
A long day, but a fun one!
I know exactly how this little dude felt...I would have done that if I could have!
On Friday, the whole conference group attended the Shanghai World Expo. Oh my: it was--you guessed it--crowded. This is the line to get in. There were about 800,000 people there the day we visited (and no, that's not a joke!).
The China Pavilion. Mostly I don't remember which buildings belonged to which countries (and I'm too lazy to look it up for you!). We didn't go into any of them (except for China) because the waits were 2, 3, 4, or even 6 hours, just to get inside one of these pavilions. No thanks!
Chinese Scottish bagpipers!
Creepy.
Silly.
How cool is this?
It's Spain's building, which looked like a lovely free-form basket.
The United Kingdom Pavilion, my very favorite by far...it doesn't even look real! At the end of each of those rods (which move in the breeze) is a seed from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew's Millennial Seed Bank. It was designed by Thomas Heatherwick.
Russia, I think.
The Little Mermaid, all the way from Copenhagen (and special water from Copenhagen brought in for her, too).
Haibao, the Expo mascot.
I feel you, brother...I wanted to lie down, too.
A family of Haibaos.
A lot of people were in the China Pavilion along with us. Now I can say I've been to a World Expo--but I'm not sure I need to go again!
