3rd time's a charm

---

So this is my 3rd attempt to set up a blog from Shanghai. I will try not to view this as anything more than difficult and I know it's not personal...but this site is public and really targets travelers, so I hope I don't get any mean emails from strangers saying it's boring! We will eventually travel outside of Shanghai, but my purpose is to share my adventures within Shanghai as we plan to move here in August.

Here is the scoop from our first day here (5/24/08)

The jouney
Hardly the roughing it experience I had prepared myself for. Mark got us upgraded to Business Class, but didn’t tell me. When we go to the airport, I nervously inquired as to the remote possibility of an upgrade, and the women behind the counter said we were already in Business. Mark is a sneaky fellow, but in this case, I loved the surprise. I had packed so many snacks and expected to be miserable for 13 hours. As it turns out, the flight is really 14 hours and I’m living the good life! This is just a long flight with great food and many movies. I do think about how the next time we come (in coach for sure) with the kids, it will not be so pleasant and relaxing. They are smaller, though, and will curl up in little balls and hopefully sleep.

The arrival
When I got up to the passport checking section, the woman questioned my Visa and I got a little scared. Mark was already through and was watching me and wondering why I was stuck. Turns out, there was a bit of red ink on my visa for the “VISA OK” stamp the United counterperson stamped on my boarding pass…somehow she got ink on my visa as well and it was a partial VISA OK stamp. After the passport checker called another dude over, and I explained again (not sure they understood me but I pulled out my boarding pass stub, pointed and smiled. Next, we got all our bags without incident and when we went through the security/customs area, neither of us was asked to have our bags checked. On to the cab, which turned out to be a van, so we were all set with our crazy number of bags.
As we drove from the airport, we saw tons of construction. There is so much building going on here. Also, we saw a lot of people riding bikes or mopeds (no helmets!) with huge amounts of stuff on them. For example, a guy on a bike with 6 cases of bottled water and some other goods, riding a bike! The driving reminded me of my first NYC cab ride when I was in college. There are no seatbelts (filed away worry about taking kids in cabs).

There are a lot of older buildings mixed with new ones. The apartment buildings have laundry hanging outside. I think we’ll have a dryer—but clearly it can be done the old fashioned way. We checked in at our hotel and then went for a walk. I made bad shoe choice and ended up with a few blisters. Oops. We took a ride from the Bund to Pudong. The Bund is an area of older architecture and Pudong is the more modern, newer section of Shanghai. The ride was basically a train like you see at airports, had about 5 people in it, and we went through a light show with a bunch of sounds and words about the images being projected. It was odd. On the other side, we strolled around and ended up in a shopping mall with a big grocery store. I was excited as this was one of my missions for the trip: are there peanut butter and honey available in China? The answer, I am thrilled to report is YES! I took a bunch of pictures while roaming the store. We saw a lot of great looking Chinese food, like frozen dim sum (Trader Joes goes to actual China). We also saw familiar comforts from home which will make the kids’ transition easier (Chocolate syrup, cereal, milk There were some crazy fruits I will post pictures of later. Not sure what they are. The meat section did indeed have huge quantities of chicken feet, but also ground beef, steak and regular chicken. Frozen corn is a big deal here…and of course rice and noodles were in plentiful supply. ). I think we will be totally fine adjusting to the food situation.

Walking down streets was very similar to NYC. Street vendors, Rolex watch sellers. A big thing was these rollerskate attachments you can attach to your regular shoes. They light up and stuff...but they look very uncomfortable for walking around and not skating. I was tempted, though. My blistered feet caused me to pause and consider trying them.

We then cabbed to Xintiandi, an area that has lots of fun restaurants and shops. Per Mark, it was designed by the same architect that did Soldier Field in Chicago. So, he left parts of the original architecture and also designed modern aspects to mix with the original. We didn’t have Chinese food for dinner. The restaurant we went to was an odd mix of Mediterranean and random all sorts of meat dishes . Kinda touristy, but an ok choice for the first meal. I was so tired, I almost fell asleep during dinner! Hopefully tomorrow we will get a dim sum fix.

---

Photos

people
not so crowded, really. I had personal space.

we found peanut butter
Nathan's top worry is now checked off my list! Peanut butter AND honey are readily available.

Comments

[Amy]

Suzanne, I was so happy to get your blog. Yours is the first blog I've ever read ... I know I'm seriously behind the times, but I'm glad I waited for such an interesting one. So far, your trip sounds thrilling .... I mean what an incredible experience! I love hearing the details of your trip so I can live vicariously through you. Tell Mark I said way to go with the Business class seats. He got some serious points for that, I'm sure. I hope you continue to have an amazing journey, and look forward to hearing more stories. We had a gorgeous day in Chicago with plenty of sunshine. Charlie, Haley and I started working on first-ever vegetable garden. Wish us luck. Hope to hear from you again soon! ~Amy

[Linda]

Suzanne...I am already in awe of you. I started with your 5/30 blog and read all your entries backward and quickly discovered that you didn't arrive feeling as comfortable as you sounded five days later. I am now one of your riveted readers! Thanks for sending me the link. Linda