Last Post:Day 10-12

Free day in Shanghai, and also last full day of fun. Our guide today was Tasha, my awesome sister!
And it was a full day of amazing stuff!

 Jade Buddha

So our first stop on the agenda was a Buddha completely made out of Jade. Very pretty, well they didn't let us get close to it or even take pictures.... well we didn't get close. There were also a lot of the avatar statues all around, and that was fun but really I think the most fun we had there was going to the koi pond was watching them get fed:

It was awesome!

The weather wasn't exactly agreeing with us today, we were really lucky most of the time it was beautiful and cold weather but today it caught up to us and yeah normally I would be 'whatever' but our next activity was the Pearl TV tower.

 That tower has two ball like platforms, the top is in clouds.

 The top ball is also the cheapest one to go to so, we thought it might be above the cloud cover...

 Yep, the top platform was in cloud cover... all the way around it.

 They did have some pretty cool observation decks

 Also, after walking around looking at a wall of white we talked the elevator guys to be nice and let us go down a floor. Thankfully they did and we were able to see some of the city.

At the base of the tower was a cool museum of the old Shanghai, full of wax people and some pretty interesting exhibits:

There were a ton more exhibits but thats a lot of picures and all of them were this detailed.

We were excited for our next activity, which was described to us as a tourist's tunnel under the channel ending up in the Bond. What we thought that meant was a tunnel we walked down with some kind of cool display about the city.... nope. It was an unmanned trolley that took you through a tunnel that did go under the channel but also giving you a show of lights and strange noises with the occasional balloon person popping out to say hi. The thing reminded me of Willie Wonka's tunnel of horror on the old movie. I freaked when those balloon people popped out. 

creepy, right?

Our next destination was the Yu gardens. This was another traditional chinese garden. And we got lost a couple time trying to get to it but we did finally get to it and it has to be my favorite of the two garden we went to. It turns out the gardens were right next to the bazaar we went to yesterday and the unique thing about this one is the top of the wall is a dragon. Oh yeah, that awesome.

 All the doors were shaped like pots!

 See Dragon! Also some of the other parts of the wall were wavy like it was flying!!

This was the daring group under the leadership of Tasha!

 After the garden we went back to the Bazar and ate the most delicious dumplings!

They were filled with crab soup and they were amazing!

 We went around shopping, getting the last minute gifts and souvenirs that we had been holding off for the trip and that was fun. I didn't get anything but Mom found a great deal on a China Doll and Dad found himself another chess set and Tasha was able to find some dolls to be her china Nativity. Everyone was very happy and got what they were looking for and for the deal they wanted.

So, by this time we were thoroughly wet (raining, all day) and tired but we had one more adventure on our list and that was the maglev bullet train.

 That's right we got tickets for a seven minute ride to the airport and another seven minute ride back just so we could go on it. It was nice to sit down and fun to watch the counter to move up to 300km per hour. Super fast!!!

We headed home after the train, and got in the hot tub to try to warm up a bit. Despite the cold it was a serious adventure today!

So, I am not going to post about the next two days because all we did was go to the supermarket, got candy, I had a bunch of chinese money left so I bought myself a purse and my very first pair of skinny jeans. Then we got on a plane and 15 hours later we were home.

It was an amazing trip, I hope you guys enjoyed hearing about it.

Adventure is still out there!!!