South Korea/China: People's Square and Xin Tian Di
Shanghai Opera House, Shanghai Museum, Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall, and other areas in/near People's Square, then over to Xin Tian Di.
Sophia found sticky rice at the local equivalent of 7-11 nearby, which was awesome.
People's Square had some amazingly fat pigeons outside of the Shanghai Museum, which actually has a very comprehensive collection of Chinese history. Unfortunately I'd seen about 70% of the stuff already in other museums, so I was bored after an hour. The architecture and the currency collection were the saving graces for me. We then wandered a bit south to find lunch, but as was typical of the guidebooks, the place we wanted to go for lunch was closed. A dozen other places on the same block meant we didn't starve, at least! We overdid it with the steamed baos, the preserved veggie ones looked a little strong and we had 7 or 8 total for the three of us, in addition to noodle soup. Oops.
Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Hall was next. The scale model of the entire city was awesome, and being able to view it from two different levels granting an "aerial" view greatly enhanced the utility of the model. Exhibitions describing the airport expansion, the new deep water port, and the neighborhood history of Shanghai were also well done-- aside from some map cases on the 2nd floor, which were both broken and dull. Roughly half of the exhibits in the museum were either broken or closed off, so after three hours we were pretty much finished, as opposed to the "could be here all day!" feel of most other good museums.
We finished wandering People's Square afterwards, then made it over to Xin Tian Di for dinner. We expected more restaurants and didn't realize it would be so high-end; it wasn't until after we got back that we were told any place labeled "New Heaven and Earth" was like to be ritzy. Whoops. We did see one of many Coffee Beans there, as well as Starbucks, in addition to less familiar brands such as Wagas and Chamate. Din Tai Fung was there, too.
