Day 7 - Shaanxi History Museum

Flying out of Xi'an today but not before a visit to the Shaanxi History Museum. I didn't have a personal guide in Xi'an because the local guide, Bryan spoke English, but I found that I never really knew what was coming up next, so when we got to the museum I had no idea what it was but it proved to be a very interesting museum.

http://www.travelchinaguide.com/attraction/shaanxi/xian/provincial_museum/

I found many of the artefacts interesting and the clay pottery models were different to anything else I had seen before, so once again, well worth a visit. Then a very nicely presented lunch in one of Xi'an's better hotels before flying out to Shanghai.

Got to Shanghai around 5.30pm where I was again introduced to another personal guide. Her name is Jane and spoke excellent English. I was also to notice that she was always impeccably dressed. I was to learn later that she does spend a lot on clothes and make-up. This is the new China, very with-it and up to date as far as the young people are concerned. For something different we went straight from the plane to the train, but a very special train called the Maglev Train, ultra-fast and a tourist attraction in itself. The speed got up to 301 Kph and we got to the city in arond 15 minutes where we were then picked up by our tour bus for the trip to the hotel, The Equatorial. I noticed from our hotel room there was a big Shopping Centre so I decided to go for a walk and ran into the younger of the two doctors who were accompanying our group and Shen Ya Feng who is from the department in charge of the tour. They were concerned that I would get lost so they took me back to the hotel and got a city map for me. I didn't really need it as you can see the hotel from where I was going but it was nice of them and the map turned out to be a really good one which I used continuously throughout my time in Shanghai. The shopping centre was actually quite expensive but I did buy a Chinese DVD from the Department Store. I thought the girl there might speak English so I asked her but she shook her head no but took the DVD from me and realised that I wanted to know if it had English sub-titles which it did. Also saw a lot of people selling things on the street including pirate DVDs.