may 27, 2006

ok, correction: the name of the hotel is the metropole hotel. it's pretty nice, we got this place for like half price. tomorrow we're going to have to move out and find a hostel though. partly because they're a bit cheaper, but mostly because we want to explore a different part of the city.

today, went to the Shanghai museum, and it was awesome. really great place. admissoin for students was only 5 RMB, translating into less than a dollar canadian. it's actually a really nice museum. they had this one gallery that displayed a collection of gems from this one guy named Michael Scott. he used to be the president of Apple like 30 years ago. anyways, they had some crazy gems there but unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take pictures of them.

then we went to the shanghai urban planning museum. nothing too special, but it was cool to see what shanghai will look like in 20 years.

all in all, shanghai is a really cool city. sort of reminds me of toronto because there's chinese people, french people, indian people, and well... no black people yet. but it's cool walking around and hearing some different languages around. but a lot of people can speak english.. so that's really helpful (e.g. in stores, restaurants). and we finally got to see the blue sky today. probably only see that like 3-4 times within the past 4 weeks. usually there's just a huge cloud of pollution above every city. so yeah, it was a good day. probably going to check out a cheap market tomorrow that my friend told me about to pick up some gifts for ppl.