A Scale Model of the entire city? yes please

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Without any concrete plans we slept in a little bit, laura woke up and researched activities for the day.

On our way out of the hotel we spoke to the concierge, and he hooked us up with a map, and his personal notes on things to see, and things to avoid.

We went down the street to a popular dumpling place. They were only making 3 types of dumplings that day. Pork and Egg yoke, Pure Crab, and a Crab Roe dumpling. We went with the pork, and a beer. It was very very good, and again very inexpensive, a dozen pork dumplings, and a 600ml beer for 33CNY.

We then headed to the Shanghai Urban Planning Musuem. This museum was built in preperation for the 2010 World Expo ( wikilink) and was updated in 2014, so it was very up to date. The first section was an overview of the river, and all the of the things built up around it. The next part was a history of the city, going back to early days of the area when it was just an agricultural county within the chinese empire, through the colonial period when the West opened up the city, to the modern ultra-modern megalopolis of today.

It had a 1:500 scale of the main city on one floor that was spectacular. I love scale models of things, so this walk around model was awesome.

The next section was the pre-human history of Shanghai, talking about the geological processes that gave the city its current landscape. Another section covered transportation, the growth of the metro, and proliferation of buses, traffic control and infrastructure development. And then the last section discussed the plans and current projects in Shanghai.

It was a very good musuem, informational, and visual, there was alot of stuff to read, and even more to look at. Our inability to read Mandarin did not limit our experience in any appreciable way.

We then wandered through parts of the French Concession (remember when i said the West opened up Shanghai )
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_French_Concession

We spotted the US Consulate, not as overt security as i would have expected, but certainly not a friendly welcoming place.

This whole neighborhood has been taken over by foreigners for 150 years, and it was apparant in the architecture and some of the businesses, to include hooters.

pic here

We hopped the metro back to our neighnborhood to research what to do for dinner, and was once againt almost mildly kidnapped.

As we exited the train station a young couple asked if we could take their picture, we obliged, they then engaged us, asking where we were from, and complimenting our English (i think it is wierd that they will ask us where we are from, and when we say the US, they compliment our english, buddy, thats the language spoken here, i dont compliment your Mandarin when you speak to me). They asked us where we were going, and what else we had seen. At first they seemed just really friendly, i was immediately suspicious, cause no one in the world is that friendly, but then they started talking about how they were planning on going to a tea house, and invited us to come with them. We were friendly and cordial, I wanted to see how much of their time we could waste without putting ourselves in danger. Ultimately the engagement lasted at least 5 minutes, only for them to walk away empty handed, and us with a good story.

We then made our way to dinner, a noodle place. I got a dry noodle dish, and laura got a tomato-sauce, and beef rib dish. My food was great, the noodles were tossed in a vegetable oil, and had a side of that same green relish that we have been unable to identify, and lauras beef was delicious, the soup the noodles were in was just ok. satsfied with dinner, we walked back through the market area we navigated to get here,

this place had meat, im guessing halal, because there were alot of lambs and no pigs.

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it was interesting, not that i have any way to cook these things, but the meat looked good. One of the shops had little puppies that were eating scraps, and presumably keep the vermin away, laura was very excited.

We stopped at a grocery store to snag some sweets, and bought some bananas at a fruit vendor down the street.

We went home for an early night, so we can start the next day a little early.