July 16: Day at the Hotel
We were so content to have an "off day" before beginning the next big adventure. We "slept in" until nearly 6:30 (considering we were in bed before 9:30 pm), and enjoyed a big breakfast downstairs. We laid out by the pool, Kim exercised, and I worked on the computer making final videos for the SE Asia trip. We had a light lunch of frappacinos at Starbucks next door and an early dinner of pizza at a restaurant just two doors down. Feel V-E-R-Y safe and secure, especially because the hotel is part of a huge complex of stores, including a grocery, restaurants, etc. which you can visit without ever leaving the hotel property.
July 17: Viking "Imperial Jewels of China" Adventure Begins
And so the adventure BEGINS! We found a Viking Cruise representative in the hotel lobby yesterday and he told us that there were several different groups, each with their own individual guides for this trip. Of the 256 capacity for the Viking Emerald ship, this trip would have about 180 passengers. He also told us that guests were scattered at three different hotels; also that our guide would meet us at 8 am in the lobby today. So when we went down we met Iwaha, who goes by "Iowa" as his "American name" :) He will be our guide from today until he takes us to the airport in Beijing in two weeks. And there are 27 guests that will always be with him on excursions. He later told us there are seven guides/groups. As we rode along on the bus to our first stop of the "Shanghai City Tour" he began teaching us some Chinese language....so for those of you following along, you too can learn! These are in phonetic spellings by the way....."knee how" means Hello! / "Bong-bong" means GREAT and is typically used with a thumbs up sign! / "ma ma who who" means bad / "she she" means thank you / "sherr" means yes and "boo" means no. We also learned that on your birthday in China you eat long noodles and peaches so you will have a long and happy life.....so when we get home, for my birthday dinner (August 1st) I will be having spaghetti and peach cobbler!
Our initial stop, only fifteen minutes from the hotel was at the "Bund" which is the riverfront. Behind us were the old buildings, built in the late 1800s, and across the Po River is new Shanghai. If you look at the sky scrapers in the photos below (behind Kim and I and in the other river photo) - just 27 years ago this was empty farmland! WOW. The tallest building you see, off to the right, it is 88 stories tall and it is the second tallest building in the world. The architect is the same guy who designed the tallest building in the world, which is in Dubai. We were at the Bund for about 25 minutes, then back on the bus. We stopped next at the market place which is also where the famous Yu Garden is located. We toured through the gardens for about 45 minutes. The boat floating at right with the mist (to cool the crowds, but it made for a "cool" photo!) is from there. Interesting side note....the Chinese are very superstitious and the bridge across the water (shown at right) goes in a zig zag patter - why? Because evil spirits, like zombies can only walk in straight lines, they believe!
We were give about 35 minutes to shop in the open market place, but Kim and I just walked around - another side note......Iowa told us early today that this trip will have very limited shopping opportunites! HORRAY from us! We dislike greatly when on an excursion and they say, "we're going to give you and hour (or more) of free time)" ... no, show me something, tell me about it. So we will be happy to avoid the shopping time! When we met up as a group we walked about fifteen minutes to a more modern mall with four levels for lunch. But before lunch we went into a silk gallery. All of the display items, which looked like paintings were hand-stitched silk. Note the picture of the girl below right - all hand stitched silk. We were shown someone actually stitching - we'd NEVER have the patience. And two interesting things.....they can split a strand of silk to 1/48th size for stitching! WOW. And secondly, they have perfected the art of double-sided stitching where they can, for example the one we saw, it is a tiger on one side, and when you flip it around it's a lion. VERY impressive.
Finally we headed upstairs for authentic local food for lunch. When we saw the menu with about a dozen items listed we all wondered if these were the choices.....no they brought out big bowls of ALL of it and we shared on a carousel in the middle of the table. We could not finish it and as I looked at the left over food I hated to see it going to waste and recalled that as a kid my Dad always said, "clean your plate, there are people in China starving" - well here we are IN CHINA, so I don't feel as bad :)
We were back at the hotel by about 1:30. We skipped the scheduled trip to the famous Shanghai Museum this afternoon so (a) we could have some down time and (b) so we wouldn't be out in the heat. Instead of having a free morning tomorrow and waiting around for an afternoon flight to Wuhan (where we board our ship), Iowa changed our group's schedule so we'll leave the hotel about 9 am and go to the museum when it's cooler and less crowded; then we'll head directly to the airport and have a short wait before boarding the 1 1/2 hour flight. SO appreciative of the planning of our tour guide already. And as a final note to the morning......we met a LOT of people not only in our group of 27 but several other couples from the other groups who will be on the ship and already have begun to bond - we like them all and they all seem to like us (or are at least being nice and pretending to!). This evening we met up at 5:30 pm and walked to a restraunt adjacent to the hotel before going to the Chinese Acrobatic Show, "Era." We walked to the show....guess where it was - IN OUR HOTEL! How convenient! What a great first day!
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