"Chili Itself can Chicken"

Today we set off on an adventure all over the city. To start, we visited the Shanghai Aquarium which cost us just under $30 dollars, so we hoped it would be worth it. We went in and saw all of the different exhibits, which had most all of the fish you could think of. The path led us through a whole bunch of the cool underwater tunnel things where we could see sharks, stingrays and other big fish going over us. It was a cool way to see the fish, but also made us very dizzy with the curved glass.

Outside view of the aquarium, located right by the famous Pearl Tower.

These tanks were filled with little fish that would come up and suck on your fingers when you put your hands in- a pretty weird feeling!

A voltmeter on a tank of electric eels that showed when they were letting off currents.

The first of many underwater tunnels.

This tunnel took you on an escalator down which was pretty cool.

A lot of the tanks were like this one where the top was completely open to the public, so we saw a lot of parents forcibly keeping their childrens' hands out of the water.

Hanging out with some giraffes at the aquarium

Taking a dip with some fish 

I also found some penguins to hang out with, and we discovered that Joe is taller than the average penguin. 

One of the major highlights of the aquarium is the jellyfish exhibit, which we watched for quite some time. Along to some very relaxing music, the lights in the tanks change colors giving the jellyfish a different neon color as they swam by.

Once past the jellys, we went through the world's longest underwater tunnel, which we did very quickly as we all got dizzy from the glass again. After you get through the tunnel, you basically get kicked out of the aquarium as there is nowhere else to go but the gift shop.

Joe booking it through the tunnel to save his head from spinning.

We're gonna need a bigger boat.

Strange looking fish.

After leaving the aquarium, we headed back to People's Square to knock another thing off of our to-do list: a visit to the Urban Planning Museum. This is basically something that Shanghai built to teach people about the history of the city and show how much it has changed. One of the big features is a huge 3D map of the city that lights up for day and night on a cycle. We were able to find the city pretty easily but also identified the area where we are staying right now. It was a cool museum and definitely worth it to see the map. 

I seem to have the need to pose with every statue that I come across.

The big city map with the more popular areas lit up.

An aerial view of the big map from the floor above.

These were big kaleidoscopes that you stick your head in and you can see pictures above. We thought it was a funny sight with everyone's heads hidden.

After walking around the museum, we headed to a pedestrian street area we had heard of called Xintandi which is a modern area with lots of fancy restaurants and bars and all European style buildings.

Chili can apparently do anything it wants.

The whole area was decked out with little Christmas lights for the holidays.

One of the cool things about doing Xintandi after the museum was that we had seen a little replica of the area in the museum and then were able to see the real street view.