The idea was to get the metro to Nanjing Road East station, find the sign pointing the way to the museum, and go there. Dead easy you might think. The first big mistake was to leave the station by the wrong exit (all Chinese stations are huge and, despite lots of signs in English, are easy to get lost in) and started walking in the wrong direction. A boy in a coffee shop, where we had some excellent lattes, took a long time over serving us but actually pointed us in the right direction. Somebody else, who seemed to know what he was talking about, evidently didn’t because we took his advice and got lost. We tried to find our directions by asking for the way to the Bund, but nobody understood us. Perhaps they call it something else.
After walking a long way we arrived at the Lujiazul metro station and, recognising that we were hopelessly lost, decided to get back on Line 2 and ride to Hongqiao railway station to book tickets for Beijing. This was accomplished with the least of hassle and actually cost us less than if we had paid the previous day. However, the farce continued. Returning to Nanjing Road East, we got onto a very crowded train and, unable to see the station names flashing up on the carriage screen, overshot the station by about 3. So we got out, went back and forth across the platform, and got onto a train which continued in the wrong direction so we overshot Nanjing Road East by 9 stations. So we got out and went back and, finally, got out at the right station and left it by the right exit for Henan Road and the Bund.
Then we couldn’t find the sign pointing the way to the museum. Eventually I found a taxi driver who said that it was in the People’s Park and pointed the way. Then we got lost, walked a long way, finally found the People’s Park and the museum. A very pleasant young man on the door told us that we could only enter if we had bought tickets on-line and that it was fully booked for months in advance. So, after a totally wasted day, we returned to the hotel. Some blurb from the tourist office says that about 40,000 people a day go there, so we should have guessed that there would be problems.
The day ended nicely when we went back to the little dumpling shop and had a delicious meal.
The Museum
