At the Aquarium/Pearl Tower...with 50,000 Chinese

Photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/krfraser5/AquariumPearlTowerMay2008

Day two of Dave and Ayumi's visit brought us to downtown Shanghai (Pudong side).  I drove since Mr. He had the holiday off and we left early to try and avoid the crowds.  (Lesson 3: May Holiday being reduced to one day from three, makes the one day very, very, very busy.  Avoid major attractions.)  Our first taste of this lesson was upon arriving at the aquarium and having a full parking garage.  The attendant promptly explained the situation and where I was to park.  I did not understand a word...but did understand the hand motions.  After we parked, we walked to the aquarium.  There we saw bus after bus after bus dumping loads of people into the aquarium.  Not a good sign, but we forged ahead.  Inside we found that the crowd was now contained in a much smaller space and we could not estimate how many buses had dropped off people...a lot.  Crowded was an understatement as we jostled for viewing of exhibits.  We even took a break in a corner to regroup, it was that bad.  Fortunately, once we got past the first few exhibits the crowd thinned enough to enjoy what is truly a fantastic aquarium.

Having worked up an appetite we walked to the Super Brand Mall and had lunch at our favorite dumpling restaurant.  Since we had 7 people we got a private room with a great view of the river.  Very cool.  However, after trying to order 4 fried pork plates from our Chinese waitress we were switched to an English speaking waiter who explained that it was too much food.  Not cool.  We proved them wrong...rolled out of the restaurant and headed back to the Pearl tower.  We had to fight the crowds to get in since it is apparently quite popular to hang out outside the gates and look to see who is going in/out.  Once in it was about a 20 minute wait to take an elevator to the 263 meter point.  There we had some great views of Shanghai on about as clear a day as you will get here.  The best part was we could plan our escape route from our parking spot...the worst part was there was no escape route...traffic was not going to be fun.

As usual in both the aquarium and the Pearl tower Justin was a main attraction having several photo ops with the locals.  One cute Chinese girl about his size wanted her picture with him at the Pearl tower.  He was quick to explain that she was not his girlfriend...sure she's not Justin...she was cute.  Another pattern also started to emerge...Amanda looks very much like Dave and Ayumi's daughter, especially when holding Ayumi's hand...and people were asking...too funny!

We left the tower and went back to the car and made our way out to the street...everything was fine, if not slow, until we hit the entrance to the Super Brand Mall.  If you look closely at the picture from the Pearl tower you can see where we got stuck, it is a mass of people and cars in front of the mall.  To make matters worse, a taxi and a bus ran into each other and both drivers were outside the vehicles yelling and pointing.  We had cars all around us, several within inches of the car, as everyone tried to maneuver around the accident and also tried not to hit the stream of people going to the mall.  We made it through safely, with no pedestrian casualties.  Dave and Ayumi were shocked and amazed and ready to go back to Tokyo.  They could not believe the complete chaos that we traveled through, but were glad to see it first hand.   I was really glad I got to drive it first hand...not!!

For all the crowded moments, it was a good day two.  Stay tuned for day 3...