South Korea/China: Yu Garden, Aquarium, Library
The Yu Garden is a medium-sized garden/temple/shrine; it's one of many areas like it, but this one is distinguished by the extremely popular shopping area attached to it, which includes one of the most popular places for xiaolongbao in the world. It is good. And tasty. And worth the wait in line, especially if there's three of you, so ther others can run off to order stinky tofu to snack on while you wait!
We walked through an extremely run-down area to the old city wall, which was tiny and equally run down. Blah.
Walked across some busy streets to The Bund, poked around the old Bund Lighthouse for a bit, then declined to stay there longer since it had been turned into a bar.
Went to the Shanghai Ocean Aquarium, which was much more focused on pushing-you-through rather than letting you browse around, but the collection of fishes on display was still pretty awesome. They had some unique ones rarely displayed anywhere else, and the underwater tunnel exhibit is the largest of its kind. Jellyfish, shark embryos, sharks, giant turtles, etc. It's not nearly as pretty or natural feeling as Monterey Bay Aquarium, so maybe I'm a bit spoiled?
Wandered down to the Shanghai Library afterwards. They were kind to tourists and let us in without making us get a library card, then we headed down the street to a noodle shop listed in the guidebook... only we couldn't find it. Eitehr we were on the wrong part of the street ("Central" vs. "East" or "West" perhaps?) or the guidebook was straight up wrong again? Regardless, that sucked. At the address we thought we were at, there was a Cantonese-style restaurant, so once we stopped complaining about the guidebooks sucking, we shut up and ate and were happy. =)
