Yet another early morning start as we prepared to leave Xian for Shanghai. The 4:30 alarm was rough after a short nights sleep. After breakfast at the hotel we loaded up the bus and made our way to the airport. The Xian airport was less chaotic then the Beijing airport and didn’t feel as stressful. After a turbulent flight (it was raining when we left Xian and also when we landed in Shanghai) we were at our 3rd city.
We met our local tour guide, Heidi, and took the Maglev High Speed Train (bullet train) into the city. We went about 18 miles in 7 minutes going 300/kmph. The bus met us at the train terminal and took us to lunch.
We had a typical Chinese lunch (round tables with platters of food served family style). All the food was excellent. After lunch we went to the Shanghai museum. The museum was really well laid out, but I was completely exhausted from the early morning wake up and really couldn’t focus on much of anything in the museum. It was 4 floors and it wasn’t until the 2nd floor when I came up with a game to make the museum a little more interesting. We had been given a brochure with maps of the museum and on each floor there were little pictures of the some of the items in the exhibit. I told Leah we should play eye spy in the museum and look for those specific items. Too bad I hadn’t thought of that when we started on the 4th floor.
Upon leaving the museum, we went to check in our hotel. I think our tour guide had wanted to take us somewhere else, but Kathy told her that we were all exhausted and really just wanted to rest for a bit before we went on our night cruise on the river. I’m so glad she told her that because I think the tour guide wanted to take us to a place to wonder and shop. I was way too tired for that. We had about an hour to relax and it’s just what we needed.
We headed to the river and got on a 3 story boat. The boat was crowded and it was hard to take pictures of the beautiful night skyline over the people. There a VIP deck on the 2nd floor that you could pay 80RMB to go on. I noticed that there was nobody on the side we were looking down on, and suggested that it would be worth the $12 or so dollars/person to sit and relax and enjoy and not fight with the other people. So glad that we decided to do this. When we went to the VIP level we had actually found most of our group already sitting there. We all had the same idea. Tom and I had a beer and enjoyed the passing night skyline scenery. The extra money was worth it for the hour or so cruise on the river. Leah pointed out the Kempinski hotel. This had particular significance to us as it was the 5-star hotel in Djibouti that we both spent time at when we were deployed there.
Upon returning to the hotel Amy, Leah, Tom and I went to a noodle restaurant around the corner from our hotel. We had an interesting time ordering as the menu was all in Chinese and the workers didn’t speak a lot of English. We managed to order some noodles and pork and Leah got dumplings. All the food was good. We had originally thought the restaurant was open 24 hours as indicated by the sign that said 24 with a picture of a sun and moon, but the staff was cleaning up and shutting down around us as we were eating. They didn’t kick us out, but they sure looked like they were ready for us to leave.
We’re hoping for a good nights sleep after the exhausting travel thus far and terrible beds in Xian. From our quick nap earlier I can tell that the bed is already 100 times better. Fingers crossed for a good night!
