Yesterday myself and my friend Lydia went to Shanghai to see this exhibition on Renaissance Art and it was great. I’ve always enjoyed this period of history and more importantly Leonardo Da Vinci, who in my opinion was one of the greatest minds in history. So it was also great to see a real self portrait of the man, although the Mona Lisa that was here was a copy.

We were lucky enough to arrive early and so there was not a lot of people and for those that were there they treated this with respect, speaking quietly and moving about enjoying the feast that was on offer. After we had seen all of the exhibition, Lydia said that she had missed seeing the Mona Lisa and so we back tracked to the beginning going against the flow. Just as we reached the last doorway to that room there was a hoard of tourist entering and unfortunately the ambience of the place disintegrated in a heartbeat. When a tour guide is leading a group they use a microphone and small speaker which is usually way too loud and the sound quality is shit. And so we have gone for a quiet environment  to this dreadful rabble flowing through a healthy body like a insidious poison.

This has got to be one of the most annoying attributes of going to public places in China. The groups are way too large and they when they flow through a space they have little or no respect for anyone else. But as I said, we went early and so we were lucky to enjoy this exhibition before it got chaotic.

I hope to go to to Italy and see more of this wonderful artistic period and if all goes well then I might even be able to fulfil this dream in January or February next year. I’ve been putting off for too long a trip to Italy and so I think I will bite the bullet and make plans.

From Suzhou to Shanghai is only around 40 mins on the high speed train and this is very convenient but the problem is when you arrive in Shanghai, because it’s such a big city and although the metro system is very useful, it just seems to take a long time and many changes of metro lines to get to where you want to go. It took longer to traverse the city than to travel from Suzhou to Shanghai. Not my cup of tea.

But was it worth it? Of course it was………………it was a great exhibition and it shows you what can be achieved by man even although all around him is chaos and war. Although this seems to be a very romantic period in history, Leonardo was tasked with designing weapons of mass destruction. He created such detailed drawings of the human body that for many years these were used as a reference material and guides to help doctors. Some of the engineering solutions he perfected are in use today.

To find out more about Leonardo you can have a look here because I am too lazy to write anymore.

Leonardo