On the second day of our Shanghai Alive trip, we took the students to the glass museum downtown in the morning.  Since we got there early, we stopped by a coffee shop to relax for a few minutes.   One of the quirky things about Shanghai- or China for that matter, is that various businesses will often open up shop right next to one of their competitors.   In this instance, there are no less than five coffee shops all next door to each other;   Starbucks, a Japanese coffee shop, a local Chinese place that offers mostly cold coffee & iced drinks, and a place that has just opened. "Kowpiluwak Coffee" offers the finest coffee from Indonesia, which has been digested by Civets in order to cut the acidity.   The "Poop Coffee" as we referred to it on the trip was actually not bad at all- although 128 RMB for a cup (about 17 USD) was a little more than I'd pay for a cup of coffee on a regular day.  However, I'm grateful that my colleague Kate talked me out of buying their premium coffee that came out to about 50 USD a cup.  It was a hard decision between 'you only live once' and 'are you really going to pay that much for a cup of coffee, i don't care what kind of animal digested it first'.

Although that might have been the highlight of this coffee junkie's day, hopefully the students (who didn't try it) found other highlights.  Perhaps their favorite part of the day was the Liuli Chin Museum- a great exhibition of Chinese glass from across the centuries, with accompanying video to document the process.  Maybe it was finding lunch and wandering around Tai Kang Lu, a great street of cute shops and art galleries.  My guess though that it would be the three hours we spent learning how to make teapots at the Pottery Workshop.  

In the images below, you'll see the highlights from the day.