Saturday November 1

Saturday November 1, 2008

Today was another tiring, amazing and fulfilling day. There are so many things to describe – I don’t even really know where to start! We started our day at the Shanghai Museum – it was opened in 1996 and had four floors of everything you could ever imagine related to Chinese history.

The top floor was minority costumes, furniture from way back when and currency (I didn’t check out the currency section), and the best section in my opinion was the ceramics and pottery section on the second floor. I took hundreds of pictures (again!) and although I didn’t think I was a museum person, I enjoyed the two hours that I spent there.

There was a wonderful gift shop where mom and I got some more souvenir shopping done – and the prices were amazing. Books for Ryan, magnets for me – I am amazed at how little it all cost. After the museum, we all hopped back on the bus to go to our Dim Sum lunch.

Dim Sum in China is much different than it is at home. Here food was still served on the lazy susan in the middle of the table. However, the difference was that many of the dishes were “finger” foods to be picked up with your chopsticks, rather than dishes to be scooped with a spoon. I am not sure if there were other differences, but that was the main one that I noticed.

After lunch we went to the Yuyuan Garden – what an amazing place! Steven shared with us all sorts of history about it - most of which I heard but can’t remember in the right order to put on paper here. But there were many photo opportunities – I was able to get a few pictures of mom and I that I will be printing out for friends and family.

Dinner was on our own last night – Harold, Kathy, Louise, Connie, Mom and I went to the Hong Kong restaurant recommended by Jei. It was a quick walk there, but on the way, Louise engaged one of the street vendors, which was a bit of a humourous situation. He kept chatting with her, and he jokingly said he would wait for us outside the restaurant. He was gone when we came out, but it gave us all a good laugh.

Our dinner was nothing short of excellent (as all of our meals have been on this trip). However, ordering it and eating it was a bit of a challenge. Yes, they had English menus. No, that didn’t really help us much when it came to ordering. All of the foods had a number, and you basically checked off on the order form the items that you wanted. Harold and I were feeling exotic so we ordered duck tongue and pigeon – it turns out Harold is much more adventurous than I am – he ended up eating most of the exotic foods.

After our dinner we took a walk along the shopping street behind our hotel. The street was completely lit up at 9 p.m. and we got to do some toy shopping for my nephews. There were still deals to be had (six big containers of gum for $ 4.00), but the prices were a little more like I had expected in regular stores in China.