Exploring Shangers

Today I headed out to brave the metro to visit downtown Shanghai. After being dropped off on the side of the road at Shanghai Science and Technology Museum by the taxi and being a little unsure of where I was, I managed to fend off the market stall vendors to find my way to the metro station.

Once on the train, it was pretty easy to navigate my way around. I got out at Nanjing Road East and wandered down the pedestrian mall looking in a few shops and generally taking in the sights. Even in the city center I had to fend off dodgy traders trying to convince me to come to their store for "sunglass, bag, watch".

At the end of the road, I went through the underpass and into Renmin (People's) Square. On my stroll around the park, I came across this group of men gambling - not uncommon at all in China.

I then headed to MoCA, the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. It was a small museum but an interesting one with alot of multimedia installations as well as some sculptures and paintings. One of my favorite pieces included a scale model of some of Shanghai's architectural landmarks made out of scrap metal and car parts.

From there I headed to the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. Although it sounds pretty dull, it was actually pretty cool. The highlight was the scale model of the whole of Shanghai. The model showed every building in Shanghai and also others expected to be completed by 2020. There was also an exhibition on the World Expo to be held in Shanghai next year. The mascot, Haibao, could be seen everywhere in the city.

After a bit more wandering around the park, I finally found the Shanghai Art Museum. What I loved about this museum was that although there were signs everywhere saying that you couldn't take photos it seemmed that everyone ignored that rule so I jumped on board with everyone else and took some photos of my favorite pieces. The museum was pretty small but I definitely liked alot of the pieces.

By this time I was pretty hungry so I headed to a little cafe called Barbarossa's in the middle of the park. Normally the view of the surrounding lake would be lovely but obviously they are doing a bit of maintenance so the lake was drained but the food was good as was the atmosphere.

I was pretty much museumed out by this time so I started to wander back across the park and up Nanjing Road back to the metro station. After a quick trip back to Shanghai Science and Tech museum, I jumped in a cab and headed back to Glynis and Kevin's place.

When Kevin got home, we walked to the nearest metro so he could show me the way for next time. It was amazing the difference from their side of the main road to the other. One is expat central and the other is Little China where we were the only white faces. Once we got back, we had dinner and chilled out watching American Idol. Kevin managed to break into my camera so I am happy to be able to put all my photos online.