Shanghai - Home

Today our bus to the airport is departing at 1PM so we have the morning to explore Shanghai on our own.  There are 4 different times with people leaving from our group today.  We are lucky enough to be on a direct flight to Toronto, quite a few people live in Toronto but none of them are on the direct flight with us, I think it is because we have to make a connector to Moncton that we are lucky enough to get on this flight.

Our hotel is located in a great location, only about 25 minutes to walk right into the financial district for Andre to get some close up pictures of the huge skyscrapers.  Of course we didn’t walk the direct route, we meandered through some local really run down areas, and so close to the new financial area, I’m sure if we came back in 2 years these old neighborhoods would all be gone.  On the way back to the hotel we walked along the river. 

We were glad there was not much traffic today, we've had some fun crossing the roads up to now.  The green man here I think means this "may" be a good time to cross, but check, double check, and check again for motorcycles, scooters, and cars turning as they really all think they have the right of way, the literally drive right through the crowds!

Ginger poodles were the most common dog we saw

Interesting presentation of the peeled pineapples

Local fruit stand

Doing laundry on the street.  This is about a 10 minute walk from the picture below, I'm sure none of these houses will be here in another 2 years

Shanghai business district up close



Mall in business district, $$$

TV Tower

Not so much traffic at 9AM on Saturday morning in the financial district

Disney is opening a new park here this year

Would be a great stop on a cruise ship, you are very close to town

Realized we were crossing the finish line for a marathon, we didn't get a medal!

We saw this sign often, a little lost in translation again

Nice bike seat!

Saturday AM must be laundry day

Back to the hotel by walking along the river.  Good to get out and get some exercise as well will be spending about 16 hours in planes coming up.

Off to the airport and go to the lounge with Martin and Tammy, thanks Martin if you are reading this!  Free food and liquor, so we take advantage of that.  Andre wanted to take more advantage of the liquor than I wanted him to, oh well.  Funny thing is we also ran into 4 of our tablemates in the lounge, so table 7 was well represented, we were only missing one couple. We did make a couple of trips to the bathroom here, quite the choices for cleaning, lots of laughs!  Definitely not the squat toilets we have been using the last couple of weeks. 

Good byes to our new friends, we are hoping they will make a trip east, or maybe we will some day be west again, they live in Vancouver.  Hopefully they will be in touch with us, we gave them our contact info,  but I didn’t get anyone's!

Very fancy toilet at the airport lounge

Very different from the squat toilets that we had to use in some places!

An uneventful trip home.  We flew Shanghai, Toronto, Moncton, all went well.  4 movies and that passes the time pretty quickly.  Used our Nexus cards, but it really doesn't save any time when you still have to wait for luggage.  We were the first ones at the baggage pickup, but nearly the last ones to get our bags. 

The long awaited Beef Burger

Impressions of this trip – we loved it.  We were pleasantly surprised how much we enjoyed this method of travel, especially I think with it being China and the huge language and reading barrier.  But I think a lot of it has to do with the group you are with.  Everyone was extremely considerate and on time, we never waited for late people.  It was fun having the mix of ages, we were worried it would be a super senior tour, but it definitely wasn’t.  We liked it so much we would consider doing another trip with them that focused more on the rural areas of China, we will see. 

Now we just have to get used to the 13 hour time difference, our internal clocks are taking a while to adjust back!

Note: Total lens cap drop for Andre 2,658 for this trip....