So, now on to Tuesday, but first for 29palms. The train ride was 5 hours, with 4 quick stops (under 5 minute stops) and went 300kph and its a little over 800 miles, very smooth and did not feel like you were travelling that fast, cost around $95, in 2nd class. Train station very effecient, sit in the main area and wait until about 15 minutes before the train is going to leave and they open to doors, you walk down to the train and find your seat and its off. No reason to get to the train station to early as long as you know you will not have traffic or delays getting there.
They really are two different cities, never went to 'downtown' beijing so not sure what the area is like. Shanghai was nice because we had a friend there that showed us around. I am sure we would not have seen much if we were on our own. Beijing has more tourist sites, if I had to pick one of the two I would say Beijing mainly due to the great wall.

Back to the trip report, Tuesday March 25th.

Woke up Tuesday with a little rain. We were never in a rush in the mornings as our host had children and two of them left to school around 8:15am. The 3rd child was 3 and went with us on our travels. We walked to a restaurant for breakfast at a small cafe, they got scrambled eggs and I decided to try the eggs benidect (not very good).
On the way back from breakfast our host pointed us towards the propoganda poster art center. It was very interesting to see how they depicted Americans as old and weak and the Chinese as young, large and strong (picture a chinese Popeye). They had posters from the 1940's to the 1970's.

So, after returning from breakfast and the art center we headed out to West Nanjing Road.Our host had a doctors appointment on Nanjing Raod so our day started out walking West Nanjing road West of The Peoples Square and ended up in the Peoples Square area. Nanjing Road is Shanghai's main shopping street for high end products, except for our next stop-580 West Nanjing Road. Our host left us to head to his doctors appt. so we were left to fend for ourself. This is one of the more popular 'fake' markets. There was 3 or 4 floors full of stalls selling everything from jewelry, jackets, handbags to shoes, sunglasses and silk. Again, fake market, consider everything is fake so bargain hard. I am so bad about buying anything for myself or friends/family that I did not end up getting anything. My friend however bought a couple of handbags. Her thought was even though you know the bags are fake (bags like Prada, Michael Kors and Jimmy Choo) as long as they seem to be made well, stitching not falling apart, and you like the look you just can not buy a no name handbag in the states for the price. Again, bargain, they start off at ridiculous prices like $100 USD, and you can normally get them down to $10-$15 USD. These stores ended up being on my top 5 of things to see as its fun trying to see how low they will go. Remember, once you start looking at something you will probably not get out of the stall without buying something.

After the shopping we headed towards the office building where we met up again with our host. Ended up going to a mall on the East side of Peoples Park to eat at the food court. Hungry and undecided of what anyone wanted we ate one of the very few western meals on our trip with a burger at Carls Jr.

Our host needed to pick up his youngest from a preschool, my friend ended up going with him as I decided to walk around People's Park and to visit the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. They had one floor with a 1/500 scale model of Shanghai. I believe it was originally built for the 2010 world fair, it really shows how big the city is.

After that I went back to the house to relax before heading out for a traditional Chinese acrobat show at Shanghai Circus World. The show would have been better except I had seen a lot of the show on America's Got Talent. Examples, person balancing on a board while flipping up bowls from the board to his head- On AGT there was a person on a unicycle flipping bowls from her foot to her head. Another was of someone doing flips/twists from a flexable board held up by two peoples shoulders-again seen on AGT. Then for whatever reason the final part of the show was one of those motorcycle globes of death-seen at state fairs where motorcycles get inside a sphere and ride around without crashing. Did not seem appropriate for an acrobatic show. If it was not for seeing a lot of the parts of the show it would have been much better.