Shanghai Museum & Boarding The Viking Emerald
This morning we left the hotel at 8:45 am, bound for the Shanghai Museum and then on to the airport.
We are not big museum people, so we were less than excited, but hey......when will we get a chance to be here again? Our guide, Iowa told us on the way that for big museum people the time of 90 minutes was probably too little, for those not interested, probably a little too long. We were delighted to discover that we took nearly the entire hour and a half alloted to walk around and see the four floors of artifacts. The first really cool thing (see below) was when we got to the museum there was a HUGE "Disney-esque" line, like at Space Mountain in prime time! Oh no......oh wait, we're with Viking! Walked right by them all to our OWN entrance and were inside within five minutes. Whoooo hoooo - you gotta love cruising with Viking! Who wants to go with us on our next one! The first thing that caught my eye was a shaman figurine about five inches tall - I listened to the audio description and it was over 4,000 years old! Very impressed, so I snapped a picture. Later I saw the program/guide that the museum distributes....on the cover, the shaman! I have good taste in artifacts! :). By the time we'd finished touring all the display rooms we had about ten minutes to walk through the gift shop and head to the bus. We were told on the bus that we'd be provided a hot meal in flight, as is customary on all intra-China flights, but "because we are Viking" we were also provided with a box lunch to eat prior to boarding. AND yesterday Iowa had collected our passports, then this morning our luggage. So when we arrived at the airport he returned our passports, with boarding passes and our luggage was all checked in. Again, you gotta love Viking! We got through security easily and to the gate with thirty minutes prior to boarding time. But then the announcement.....weather had delayed our plane coming in so our group and another group would have a two hour delay. Another group of passengers on our cruise had their plane and they left us behind. Sigh......what ever, one of the "perks" of travel is that you just roll with the punches of delays, etc.
Though it seemed like a long time, in the grand scheme of things a 2 1/2 hour delay at the airport was no big deal and we arrived in Wuhan about 5:30. The exit process from the airport was amazing - our Viking guide Iowa had said we were NOT to do anything.....we walked off the plane (once the M-A-N-Y people who had HUGE carry-ons took their good sweet time to pull them down, adust the handle, get their REAL carry-on adjusted and start walking) realatively easily (interesting side note....every intra-China flight has the business class class rows and once you get to economy the FIRST row is row 31! So when we were in row 45 today we were really in row 14 :) We walked through a long corridor to baggage and there was Iowa with his lollipop sign and we sat down in the designated seats. The Viking guides and their "cousins" as they were referred to hustled all the bags off and within ten minutes we were on the move to the bus and the trip to the ship. We were personally escorted to our room - a much bigger than usual river cruise stateroom, but not quite as big as the Avalon room on the Vietnam trip. But we have a balcony and the ship and our stateroom seem to be a good idea of what we will get next summer on our Viking Oceans trip to Scotland, Norway and Iceland. We went to dinner and had a great meal with wine - we were delighted to remember we DO have the alcohol package so any drink, any time, in any quantity is already pre-paid for.....have to work to make sure we get our money's worth :) Enjoyed the company with three couples from our "Iowa group" and then went back to our room which is two doors down from the lobby - so convient! There were our bags! So we unpacked, went to the briefing meeting at 9:15 pm and had one last nightcap, then checked out the observation deck before calling it a night. Tomorrow - very excited - we have an excursion at 8:30 and will be back on board at 11 am. Then sail for over 7 hours up the Yangtze River! WHOOOO HOOOOO!
NOTE.....we were told in our briefing today that once we leave port tomorrow to "be patient" with the Internet signal as it will often be inconsistent. I am hopeful to be able to get online via our guide Iowa who offered to share his personal hotspot - check back on the web page, you'll be able to see the new links appear when I can get them up and running!
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