Our last day in Shanghai was supposed to be a free day, but we were fortunate enough to be there on the opening day of the Shanghai Expo. As such, our tour company arranged a group ticket for us, and we were super excited to see what the Expo was all about. Because our ticket had a set entrance time, we were able to sleep in a bit before getting breakfast. The buffet at the Swissotel Grand had quite an eclectic mix of foods.
Deep fried veggie dumplings, hash brown, roasted potatoes, muffin, baguette, smoked salmon
Noodle soup with leafy greens and ground pork
After breakfast we made our way over to the Expo and luckily, there was no line to get in. One of the best parts of being there on opening day is that all of the facilities were still brand new and spotless. Unfortunately, reservations to the China pavilion and the Taiwan pavilion were already sold out by the time we got there, so we weren’t able to see those exhibits. We also missed the U.S. exhibit, because our guide told us there wouldn’t be much of a line. We entered the Expo right by the U.S. pavilion but decided to head all the way to the other end first, and then work our way back. By the time we got back, the line was three hours long, and we only had an hour before our bus left.
I have to say, though, that I was really disappointed with the Expo. I expected it to be like the World’s Fair of previous years, where new inventions and foods were introduced. The hamburger, for example, was introduced at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Instead, most pavilions just had tourism videos, random artifacts, and no exciting foods. The Belgium pavilion, for example, had a frites stand. That’s not something unexpected. The U.S. pavilion had a Budweiser stand. Ugh. There were super long lines for most of the countries, so we ended up only seeing the ones where there were no lines, like North Korea, Nepal, and Peru. There was nothing that wowed us, and we didn’t think it was worth waiting on those lines in the heat.
The coolest part of the Expo was seeing all the different buildings for each country. China had by far the biggest pavilion, as to be expected. Some were really cool, like Romania, which had an apple shaped building, and the Switzerland pavilion had a chair lift operating on top. We had fun looking at all the buildings and taking lots of pictures, especially of countries that we knew our friends would appreciate seeing. The Expo site was huge, and it took us a few hours just to walk all the way down from one end to the other. We stayed there from about 11 am until 6 pm, and we covered most of the grounds. We were glad to have the experience, but we just wished there was more to it.
USA! USA! USA!
South Africa and Egypt
Russia
Romania
Ukraine
"And then there was the UN, and the UN UN-nazied the world..."
Australia
The Philippines
Sea Baby - the Expo mascot
Taiwan
India
South Korea
Japan
North Korea
We stopped for some ice cream because it was really hot that day!
Cool, creamy, and refreshing
Israel
China (it's shaped like an emperor's hat)
Spain
Poland
Switzerland (the track on top is for the chair lift)
France
Great Britain
Italy
At this point we were exhausted, and decided to take a break for lunch. Because it was early afternoon by this point, the lines had died down and we were able to find seats fairly quickly. There are lots of different restaurants spread throughout the entire Expo site, but we decided to stick with Chinese food rather than chancing it at an Italian joint, or copping out and going to a KFC. We ended up at the Shanghai Snacks Kingdom, which was a giant food court/cafeteria. You pick up a tray and pick out all the things you want, and then have the cashier ring up all your purchases. We got an assortment of goodies, making this one of the tastier meals that we had on the trip.
The massive cafeteria style restaurant. The brightly colored pictures along the walls are all of the food options available
Stinky tofu (though the least stinkiest that we had on the trip)
Pork skewers
Pan fried pork and leek dumplings
Pork and crab soup dumplings (xiao long bao)
Sauteed pork with noodles
After lunch, we continued on our way to see all of the country buildings.
Ireland
Armenia
Canada
Mexico
Brazil
Back to the USA
There were tons of other countries, so if you have any desire to see a certain one, just let me know and I’ll post the pic! You know what else we saw at the Expo?
Hell yeah!
I love this place! Josh wouldn’t let me check it out in China though, the party pooper. There were a surprising number of Papa John stores though. We passed one in nearly every city we visited.
We had a little bit of time to kill before meeting up with the rest of our group to get the bus back to the hotel, so we had a soda and watched the sunset.
"New" Sprite - tea flavored
When we got back to the hotel, we cleaned up a bit and then headed back out to Nanjing Road, the shopping street in Shanghai, as we needed to pick up some more souvenirs. The street was totally packed with people, and while there were lots of clothing stores, there wasn’t much by the way of souvenir shops. We finally found one off an alley way, and got what we needed. Phew! We were pretty exhausted after spending the entire day walking around the Expo, so we skipped dinner and headed straight to bed. We needed to get up super early for our flight the next morning anyway.
The sea of people on Nanjing Road
Tags: China