Shanghai

We arrived in Shanghi on Friday night and went straight to the hotel.  Adam and I went out with a couple of his co-workers to find some dinner, which was more of a challenge then is sounds.  We ended up eating pastries at Starbucks, as it seems most places around the mall closed at 10 or earlier. 
Saturday we went to the Expo and decided to go to the places where we wouldn’t have to wait in lines.  Personally I think it is ridiculous to wait 9 hours to spend 20 min looking at the exhibit.  We of course had to go to Norway (because my family would be disappointed if we didn’t) and there was no line.  We went to Denmark and Switzerland.  On the plus side most countries would let you skip the line if you had a passport from that country and since Adam and I went around with a Malaysian and a Singaporean we got into those without waiting, and honestly the small countries were my favorites.  Unfortunately the good old US of A wouldn’t let us skip the line.  Most exhibits had tourism videos and were built to mimic traditional architecture.  There were lots of pictures, hand crafted souvenirs and of course each country had food and drink we defiantly took advantage of the drinks since it was super hot all day.  We ate lunch at the French exhibit which allowed us to skip that line and ended the day going to the African exhibit, which was a huge building with a different booth for each country.  We got on the bus at 6:00 went back to the hotel and showered before going out to sight see a little and have dinner.  We (along with a couple of Adam’s co-workers) went to the tallest building in Shanghai (until a month ago it was the tallest in China…and I think I read that it has the highest viewing area in the world).  The floor had windows in it so you felt like you were walking on air…it was really cool! 

Sunday Adam and I chose to sight see rather than go back to the expo.  We had a nice leisurely lunch in a European area at a sidewalk café.  We went to the old town which had a traditional Chinese garden (I figured out that apparently what I have called “west lake park” is a traditional Chinese garden).  We looked for an antique village but where the map said it was, was just a busy road and apartments so we went back to the mall so Adam could go to Best Buy…it’s amazing what you miss.  We took a taxi to the Airport and met our tour group…did I mention this was our first ever tour group…and Chinese none the less!  If you have ever seen a Chinese tour group, they are hilarious (not making fun, just making an observation).  Since our tour group was made up of internationally minded, highly educated Cree managers, ours was pretty low key and most people broke off from the group.  ANYWAY we got back to Huizhou at around 1:00 am and the bed never felt nicer!
Just something I would like to point out…so far on every flight we have been on (and we have been on some really cheap flights), no matter what time of day or how long the flight…there was meal service.  As someone who has grown up on airplanes and remembers the day were you would at least get a snack on flights over 2 hours…meal service is something I really miss!