Meteor Shower! Magma!

"After riding the Maglev, we tried going to the Shanghai Science and Technology Museum. It looked cool from the outside, but it is closed on Mondays and apparently today was a Monday."

The closed Science and Technology Museum

Near the museum was Century Park, the biggest park in Shanghai. It had an amusement park in it with a few rides. J and I rode the bumper cars, which probably would not have met the safety standards of the US. The cars went crazy fast and we were both left with some serious whiplash. We also rode a rotating roller coaster that I found exhilarating while J continued to worry about the lax safety standards. Afterward, we went to the lake and rented a boat. It looked sort of like a paddleboat it was actually a motorboat. We strapped on very old life jackets and climbed in. The boat was very slow, maybe a little slower than the current. Steering was a fool's errand.

It was only a problem with our boat though, all the others whizzed by us.

Later, "we" went looking for the Sex Culture Museum. "Unfortunately" we were not able to find it, so instead we took the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, which goes from one side of the river to the other and which we assumed would give us an interesting view of the Bund. In fact, we boarded a futuristic pod thing that went through a tunnel laden with flashing lights. A speaker shouted random words like "meteor shower!" or "magma!" while we passed screens displaying sea creatures. It was all very strange and we were glad we only got one-way tickets.

Once we were on the other side of the river, we walked around the big buildings in awe and took some pictures.

Cool unnecessary walkway thing.

The Oriental Pearl Tower

The Shanghai World Financial Center (or "bottle opener") on the left and the Jin Mao Tower on the right.

The Shanghai World Financial Center is the tallest building in China and third tallest in the world.

Look, we were really there!

We eventually found a huge shopping mall owned by Samsung (go Korea!). We wandered the numerous floors and when we got to the 7th or 8th we came across an enormous arcade. It had every game imaginable and some I could never have imagined. There were the classics of course - air hockey, shoot 'em ups, car games - but also ping pong on a full ping pong table against a robot, soccer, baseball in a cage, Formula 1 Racing in a race car, billi bowl* and so much more. We spent a lot of money and many hours there.

It was dark by the time we left so we went back to the Bund to admire the Shanghai skyline by night.

A lit-up yacht in front of a lit-up museum.

*Mini bowling where you hit the bowling ball with a pool cue.