Ditching the Tour BUs in Shanghai- 7-21

Today my dad and I decided to ditch the tour bus. Maybe it was the counting, the soft-spoken tour guide holding the flag attempting to round us up, or the early wake up call that made us want to do this, but I can’t be sure.

By mistake, we still got the early wake-up all this morning, but we were already were up. We headed out later than normal, because of our freedom. Once we were out of the hotel, around ten, we took a taxi to the bund area by the river. This area is filled with old European buildings. Once we were there, we walked around for about five minutes in the heat before seeing a sign for the underground sight-seeing tunnel, going underneath the river. This ride, in a little cart-thing, was just bizarre. We were sitting in probably a 6 feet by four feet subway-type thing, in a tunnel, with lights flashing all around us. The, …thing lasted for about three minutes.

Once we got to the other side of the river, we went to the Oriental Pearl Tower, since it was right there, and went to its museum. Its museum was very interesting, but all it was were these fake, life-size people in old Chinese scenarios. There were also many small models of old-fashioned areas in Shanghai. The museum was huge for what it contained.

The next place we went was the Contemporary Art Hall museum, which contains contemporary Indian and contemporary Chinese art. It is very small, but also very interesting. We also ate lunch there at probably the most expensive restaurant we’d been at all trip. However, the money proved worth it (even though I wasn’t paying for it) because it was delicious. My favorites were a pineapple-coconut smoothie, noodles with peanut sauce, and for dessert, purple rice infused with coconut milk (though it tasted much different than that), served with mango.

We also went to the urban development museum because it is right next to the art hall. In this museum has a giant to-scale model of all of Shanghai on one of its floors. It’s really interesting to look at the different types of building and to see how big Shanghai is. After this museum, we went back to the hotel to rest, and then went out next with the tour group for dinner.

At dinner they explained some eclipse-ish stuff, while, myself, in the back, where I could barely hear, entertained myself by trying to go to sleep.

-Margot