Today started the "heat wave" potion of our travels. At 28 degrees, I'm bracing myself for the next 3 days of 30+ weather. So melty. Much ice cream will be needed for us to survive (I'm not complaining about this).
We started off the day by heading over to the Shanghai Natural history museum. En route, we encounter what Jen dubbed "evil incarnate" and I dubbed "cute grass creatures" (see attached photo). The surrounding park had a cool dragon fountain (not running, sadly) and some beautiful sculptures, one of which was made by a Canadian artist (!!) (see attached photo with hand sculpture). The Shanghai Natural History Museum, unfortunately, was not about Shanghai's natural history – we were misled. We did, however, learn from important exhibits such as "Mysterious Beginnings", "The theatre of Marvelous Changes" and "Survival skills". There was a cool dino display. So not a total bust.
Our next location: Awfully chocolate was the first of the day's failures for "Captain Direction" (aka me). The desired stop appeared on my map, but the surrounding area was completely under construction and there was no evidence of a prior existing location. Instead we settled for a lunch of wonton soup (attached photo), fried turnip dumplings, and shrimp and pork dumplings. I kind of forget what vegetables taste like.
Next stop was the Jing'an temple, a Buddhist temple built in 1216. Despite this being a "hot spot" tourist destination, there was much confusion in actually locating the temple. Surrounded by high end retail, we wandered for a bit expecting to see a clear separation of shops and temple. No dice. We managed to locate the temple, beautifully decorated, with a surrounding perimeter of local shops. More confusion ensued. Surely this must be the temple, it was definitely a temple. But it was also full of shops? I'm not talking temple souvenirs or incense, but luggage and shoes and clothes and other random stuff. We wandered the perimeter with high levels of confusion about whether the temple was no longer accessible and wondering where they put all the jumbo buddha statues. Eventually we decided there was a huge misunderstanding in our review of the location and crossed the street to wander the nearby Jing'an park. As soon as we crossed the street we saw the huge front gate entrance. "Captain Direction" failure #2. But we got to see the temple in the end, so not a total fail. There was such beautiful detailing on the buildings, and it was unreal how quiet and peaceful some of the tucked away pathways were. (2 temple pictures included). Sadly, we weren't able to hear the epic drum or 7.3 tonne peace bell being rung, but it was a great experience anyway.
Jing'an park was also quite lovely, with live music, and a variety of cats.
Next stop was the Propaganda Poster art centre, a stop Jen and I were both very much looking forward to. Cue failure music. This one was not my fault. The map said the address was 686, it was actually 868. It took about 15 minutes of walking in circles, before I decided we should just try to get as close as possible to the marker on the map. This led us to a residential complex, sketchy. Then, when we tried to leave the complex I noticed a small sign indicating that the center was indeed within the complex. Win! This stop was definitely one of my favorites so far. The center did a great job of explaining (in English) what was going on during the different stages and how the propaganda art represented these changes. A few fave slogans included: "Knowledge is power", "Workshop revolution makes production daily new record like a flying dragon just by pressing the electric button", "Ride the space shuttle to travel in the universe". We weren't allowed to take photos inside the exhibit but bought some prints and postcards as souvenirs (one photo attached).
Final stop for the day was the Boxing Cat pub which has their own beer label, where I flexed my pipes with Louis (picture included). I ordered a Ringside Red and Jen got a sampler flight, we people watched and then decided to call it day (sure, it was only 7.30, don't judge us). This was the first day we spent the entire day out without heading home for a siesta, so I'm pretty proud of us, and you should be too.
Tomorrow, we head off to the countryside town of Nanjing (population 8.4 million).
Tuesday's cat sightings: 6
Don't know what time you started - but definitely seemed like a full day to me! I get exhausted just reading the post wondering if it's 2 days in one 😯
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