Walking to the metro

Well, it's ten after four in the morning.  Thankfully tonight there have been very few fireworks, or if there were any, I slept through them.  So that made for nearly seven hours of uninterrupted sound sleep.  Just a few minutes ago I heard the, "Mommy, I want some peanut butter bagel..."  And it is no wonder, both kids were out cold before we ate dinner last night and we simply couldn't rouse them to eat.  (Am I a bad mommy for admitting that it made for a great date night ~ or as much of a date night you can have with one kid passed out across two chairs beside Ian and the other snoozing soundly in the stroller beside me?  More on dinner later).

Before the day got started my sweet babies had a quick "Dora fix."

Our original touring plan was rather ambitious, even for the pace Ian and I used to keep before kids.  We missed A LOT of what our Frommer's Day By Day guidebook recommended, but I think we got a feel for the pulse of Shanghai.  We actually began "derailing from the plan" within a few blocks of the hotel.  We pretty quickly considered two things ~ 1. When we come back on a heritage tour for the kids one day, Shanghai would be a good "gateway city" because it is so close to Darcy's first home and 2. Our kids were fascinated with EVERYTHING that they saw.  ~ and we relaxed our pace and decided to enjoy what we were able to see. 

Residential streets with cyclists.

Both Kylie and Caleb kept whipping their heads around with wide eyes, taking in all they saw.  We headed down Guangdong Road toward the nearest metro.  Here are some of the things we saw along the way...

                                         

Modern skyscrapers in many interesting shapes.

Our first "detour" from the way to the metro station, a fantastically crowded pedestrian shopping street.  We ended up losing nearly an hour here just people watching and checking out the New Year and upcoming Expo sites.

The sheer mass of people in this street was exciting and almost oppressive at the same time.  It's interesting that there is no concept of "walk on the right" in this country.  Navigating our stroller among the throngs of people was a constant delicate dance, but we really enjoyed it!

 

Just in case you need a "safe place" to have a snack.  We ended up seeing this chain restaurant EVERYWHERE!

Putting new meaning into winning the "Kewpie doll."  Curious...

Cindy, this one was for you ~ thinking this would be your idea of the Chinese "temple of heaven."  Apparently they have built this fantastic pagoda for the upcoming expo and on this square they recreated it using good old "coca-cola" for the main medium. 

 

 And mainly because we had to wait about 5 minutes to get our turn, we decided to take a picture with the expo mascot.  Ian and I have affectionately dubbed him Gumby.

 I always find it fascinating that there are usually creatures outside of buildings as if they were guarding the entrances.  In Beijing it was mostly lions, here we saw a lot of dragons.

Okay, the kids have full bellies and we are going to attempt a bit more rest before we get up for the day.  Next up, riding the metro, the mag lev train, and the view from the top of the city!