Woke up early and had breakfast at the hotel. My first taste of Chinese dim sum was disappointing - a dumpling which turned out to contain some kind of sausagemeat and sweetcorn - pretty disgusting if I'm honest. It was accompanied with radish cake (upon reflection I'm not sure they got the translation right on 'radish', unless 'radish' is also the name of some kind of potent fish) and a steamed cream cake. I also had fried noodles and some bread and jam to take the edge off.

We had left early because we were headed for the World Expo. We caught the subway there, and waiting in a queue for the gates to open. They scan your bags everywhere in China (even on the subway) and this was no exception. We eventually got in, and I finally managed to grasp the scale of the whole thing - it is huge! We walked for ten minutes, then caught a bus and then a ferry across the river to get to the UK Pavillion. We had been told by Lynn (who very kindly gave us her spare expo tickets) that if you took your passport to your own pavillion you could avoid the queue, so we piled up our UK passports, hiding Bob and Penny's Canadian passports in the middle so that security wouldn't notice, and got waved through.

Never in my entire life have I been so embarassed to be British citizen. Throughout the day we visited the Pavillions for Canada, Columbia, Egypt and Peru. All of them were a hundred times better that the UK one. What a joke. It consisted of a strange structure made out of tubes of plastic containing seeds. Once you'd taken in the structure from the inside. you could then walk outside (in the blistering 40 degree heat) to see a selection of real and imaginary plants. supplied by Kew Gardens. The end.

The Canada Pavillion, in contrast, was brilliant. A vast air-conditioned structure adorned with red and white, bursting full of national pride. The walls were adorned with video screens showing all that Canada had to offer, along with bikes that allowed you to take a virtual trip. Outside there was a shop selling souvenirs from Canada and a cafe where Penny and Bob bought us some Canadian pancakes to try. We also got our picture taken with a Rocky Mountain Policeman, which attracted a lot of attention from one particular Chinese guy who then wanted his photo with all of us. In China, white people are still very much a novelty, so we've got used to people pointing and taking photos of us. Bob and Penny then also blagged us some Canadian flags and pin badges. We decided at that point that we'd all prefer to be Canadian.

We then visited the Peru, Columbia and Egypt pavilions, all of which were better than the UK effort. I would have loved to have seen more of the expo, but it was so hot and we were all wilting so we headed back to the hotel.

We headed to Pizza Hut for dinner, so that Lucie could find some decent veggie food, before meeting everyone back at the hotel at 6pm to catch the subway to see one of Shanghai's acrobat shows.

The show was brilliant - a personal highlight being a couple performing a routine on silks to the music of Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On (somewhat a holiday theme song as the Chinese seem to play it constantly). The routine came complete with looped clips from the Titanic movie played on screens in the background. Hilarious. The finale was very impressive, involving five acrobats on motorbikes doing tricks within a metal globe.