Philadelphia Museum of Art - Part 4

In all honesty... the building itself is quite beautiful.

This is a comb.

This is a stupid sideways stove/fireplace

The entrance to the Mines of Moria

Which apparently leads you to a Spanish courtyard. Something tells me the dwarves of Moria were Spanish. OYE CALIENTE!

But they couldn't take the heat.

Even with the small water fountain/well

Ice Cube has turned to Pimp My Crib

But he wasn't aware of literalists bringing him cribs to be inlaid with bits of ivory, mother of pearl veneers, and a hint of gold leaf. 

Man I can't handle you walking all over the carpet. Put that ish in some GLASS!

KEEPS IT ALL PRETTY AND ISH

Shh... I may have stumbled upon Indiana Jones' latest adventure

He seems to be having a lot of trouble with taking clear photos as the entire world before him shakes.

And that shaking lead us to the exotic eastern kingdoms of China, Japan, and Korea

Where we sipped on some fine sake

And played hide and go seek in some dressers with the stereotypical nazi villain 

But it is time to retire for you and I.

Lest we have a mishap with a dog at dusk.

Philadelphia Museum of Art - Part 3

Not much to say here other than LOOK AT ALL OF THE COOL ARMOR STUFF!

Honestly, walking through this place made me feel like I was actually walking in the armories of the books I've been reading.

(Finally got through Robert Jordan's bullshit regarding the Knife of Dreams, biznitches be crazy...).

I was sort of attempting to show the relative ginormous-ness of the sword on top of this exhibit. Maybe it counts as a longsword with a hand and a half on the pommel...

Either way, that thing is ridiculous and I can only imagine the battles to be fought with that in hand. 

In fact, it seems crazier since we have the basic (perhaps misleading) understanding that humans were generally smaller then than they were now. 

The helmets certainly accentuated that fact. 

Also reminded me of my huge head and glorious amounts of lion's mane that would be too much for the helmets to handle.

But I must say that the detail on some of the helmets were gorgeous.

There was some armor for horses as well. 

I was fully convinced that there was an actual horse and person when I turned to see this unicorn.

Apparently the chestpiece on the left was made for quite the large man. AKA FAT.

They had armor and weapons along the walls as if they didn't know what to do with all of them.

When I saw the muzzle pieces I thought it was cruel to do that to a horse despite how awesome their grill bling looked. Then I noted that they probably need their mouths protected for the inevitable face slashing that goes on in battle.

Eventually made my way into the actual shields, swords, and guns section of the Philadelphia armory.

Some might say that Philly has some large balls.

...

If you didn't notice earlier, the curators of this exhibit seemed to have an intense fascination with Final Fantasy...

Turns out someone actually did make a gunblade in times past. God only knows if the thing actually worked well. 

It was still amusing to see it was separated from all of the other jam packed cases of guns, blades, and shields.

Shanghai Part 2

Who's that Pokemon?

It's a fossilized pikachu!

The abstract art museum was really interesting. We later tried to hit the other massive museum but it closed at 4. Boohoo D:

So we decided to visit it the next day after we did a little shopping at a nearby mall type place. Claire, Lindsay, and Sarah really wanted to get some Longcham (Later learned it actually was Longchamp) bags for really cheap since we were in China and knockoffs are of course born here. I didn't think I'd fall in love with the bags as well but damnit...

Such FUN colors!

Maybe I shouldn't be posting about knockoffs but from what I've read the only difference between a "real" bag and a "fake" is the time of day they're produced. I'll have to look more into this in order to verify later.

Anyway, while we were waiting for the cops to leave - these bags are notorious for getting shopkeepers in trouble because of the whole copyright ish- I watched a little boy swing something around on a string. He was swinging it full force like a viking ship ride only it went all the way around the circle. It wasn't until it clung for dear life onto his arm that I freaked out and ran like murder into the shops.

Kids like to play with locusts/cicadas. -shudder- Got it. Onwards to food.

Mmm soup filled dumplings

After we finished up shopping/eating we went to the/a history museum.

Sheer size was daunting to say the least

A dragon protecting the minority dress?

They had an exhibit on ethnic minorities,

AKA: Assassin's Creed minorities

Jade,

Funeral Jade

Any pictures of the really intricate and small jade that they had here turned out really terribly. I regret that I don't have better shots to share with everyone. Some of it was just gorgeous and I became determined to by myself a jade bracelet.

After the jade section we wandered over to the furniture displays.

I was kind of rushing because we only had 2 hours to see everything. Also people kept running in front of me so some shots are crap once again. The work done on this furniture was amazing. I loved the detail and effort put into such beautiful wood. When I own a house (hopefully my dream home the Balmoral :P Or work on my own design again... If I ever get sims running again) I'd love to have furniture and wood floors a deep rich mahogany like this. With as many intricate details as the pieces I saw in here.

Money! MONEY MONEY! :D

 Then there was the history of currency leading up to paper.

Some of the coins were so tiny. Hard to believe we switched to paper when it was soooo pretty. Though I'm sure it was insanely heavy.

If anyone's ever wanted to know what an ingot is... Well here you go

After currency there was paintings!

Derp fish

Some of the paintings were just immensely long or large. Some depicted West Lake (Xihu), others were of general nature that I did not stop to appreciate as much as I would have liked, and others had poetry/calligraphy accompany scenes of wildlife or perhaps even the Yellow Mountains (Huangshan).

Apologies once again for somewhat crap quality. Rushing and bad lighting mixed with uncertainty of approval of photo taking made me an unsteady hand.

After the paintings and also caligraphy (sorry no pictures of that section) we hit the stamps.

Evidence that up-close shots were terribad

 There were numerous turtle shaped stamps as well as dragons. Some didn't make any sense to me in how a person with normal-sized hands could utilize successfully. The stamps came with a little card that depicted what they stamped.

CERAMICS!

God I spent the most time in here.

(Shout out to Jesimaka and Mabe Babe!)

The colors, designs, and sometimes sheer size of some of the pieces were inspiring.

In pre-communist China, Man conquer baby!

 I don't really know why there was a man standing on top of a baby. Though right next to it was a garden gnome riding a camel.

Garden gnomes have been plaguing gardens for thousands of years

Love this red

I really wish I was still taking part in ceramics.

 The glazes on statues, bowls, and other what not were just beautiful.

After finally being called towards the rest of the museum, our next stop was the bronzes!

The massiveness of a bell set was fascinating. I wish we could have listened to them.

In case you wanted to know the owner of the big bells

It looked funny

I hope to return to Shanghai before I go back to the States. This was so much fun. Also never have I drank so much bubble tea here or back at home.