The flight was great. I was a bit anxious to see how difficult it would be to be stuck in a tin can for 14 hours but thanks to a mix of not sleeping at all the night before and pretty decent on board entertainment, I barely noticed the time fly by. I got to watch ice age 2 (and fall asleep during!) as well as Night at the Museum 2 and the Proposal. The other movie was a political thriller and I wasn't in the mood so I slept some more. I also read a bit, but nothing like what I expected when packing 6 books.The plane went northwest over Canada, Alaska and then Russia before getting to China. We could see some pretty nice mountain ranges and ice sheets.
Arriving in China, I was really surprised by how quiet the airport was. No blaring annoucements competing with elevator music, commercial booths and radio CB of security guards, just silence and hushed conversations. The whole ordeal of going through customs felt dreamlike and pleasant, maybe because it was actually 2am for my system? Once we got through the friendly customs, we were able to locate transportation to the hotel at a very reasonable rate, especially considering the white glove treatment. Hotel staff are super friendly, everyone is asking why we are visiting China, how long we will stay, if we need anything, etc. We went to the pool for a few laps to refresh from the long day before exploring the area around the hotel to find place for dinner.Our hotel is nice.
The room is pretty roomy and we have a view on a building next door being built as well as the business park where Alex will work.
Alex taught me the symbol for restaurant so that I could manage to find food on my own tomorrow. Not that it would be difficult, it seems there are place selling food at just about every corner in Pudong. We ended up at a great looking place called Garden 5. We're not sure if Garden 5 is the name of the restaurant or the name of the mall or hotel that hosts it but the food ended up being delicious and very cheap. Alex assured me he understood the signs but I figured there was something wrong and the prices were either per person or per 100g because it seemed to be *that* cheap, but I guess that's China for you. We were quite perplexed when we ordered since they don't speak any English or Cantonese. Lucky for us they had a picture menu to pick from even if Alex didn't believe me that this was the way to order. We ended up with a good selection of shrimps, beef ribs and a green vegetable that may or may not be chinese baby bok choi or chinese brocoli.
We were assigned a full time staff to hang around our table that was in a private room. She didn't understand anything we asked, but she was very polite and refilled the tea without us having to tell her we needed more. All of this for about $30 canadian.There's no plans tomorrow except sleeping in. I'm hoping for good weather since I think a run around the neighborhood would allow me to familiarize myself quickly with the surroundings. From what I've seen today, everything looks totally safe around here if I can manage to keep out of the cross hairs of the not-always-patient drivers.
In the mix during the flight was Karmaflage 2, Francis Cabrel's Les beaux degats, Dub Trees' East of the River Ganges, Thierry Cham's Autrement and Asura's Code Eternity, not necessarily in that order :)
Beef ribs sound so good! With the food pics, people may think you foodie :P
ReplyDeleteGlad you and Alex got to Shanghai in one piece!
Still amazed by how little luggage you guys took :)