the end of the expo

Although we are no longer in Shanghai, we're still following the news about the city. For those that visited us in the past year you no doubt remember Haibao plastered all around the city and the 2010 World Expo signs everywhere. A few of you even visited the Expo. Well, last weekend marked the end of the Expo and I have to say I'm not sad we are missing it. From the sounds of it, Shanghai has grown more and more busy in recent weeks. Visitors to the Expo topped out at over 1 million in one day - and I'm sure many of those people also visited Yu Yuan, the Bund, the Pearl Tower and the fake markets. Which means all those places that are normally very crowded were probably at least twice as crowded. Considering many of the Expo visitors were Chinese, this means lots of crowded lines, pushing, shoving and smells (none of which I like).

I'm not sure I ever blogged about our trips to the Expo so I've gone back through my photos now. Sorry no Ang pics here, she never made it to the Expo.

This is Haibao. He was the mascot for the Expo and you could find him everywhere in Shanghai.


These are photo's of a few of the pavilions. The lines to get into some of these were always so long. We made it into the South African pavilion (because there was no line). The first photo that doesn't have a country name is the Theme pavilion. This was a series of movies and exhibits about certain themes. I cannot recall the theme that we saw but it was really odd.






Dining at the expo...one evening we were at the Expo with Deb and Ali and searched for a place to eat. We found something that claimed to be a Western Cafe. The food was horrible and the service was interesting. We teased Rich to have his photo taken with the cow because he ordered the beef - and I was pretty sure that beef would come back to haunt him the following day (it did not). Deb and Ali both ordered the 'safer' pasta dish. The waitress came by with two plates of pasta, gave one to Deb, and then walked away and gave the other dish to another table. We had to wait about 15 minutes to get another plate of pasta and were reminded once again about the lack of dining service in China!