Shanghai

Our time in Shanghai was short but we tried to make the most of it, even through the bitter cold, and see as much as possible. 

We were lucky enough to stay in an apartment hotel (for only $50 a night which is a steal from the regular rate) that was walking distance to Nanjing Lu, People's Square and The Hersheys Store, which in my opinion, had better hot cocoa than the actual Hershey park in PA. 

The People's Park was fun. There were several amusement rides  that  the kids (and Andrew) enoyed it while Colten took a nap.  The prices to ride were moderate but you do need a tickets for each ride - no "bands" like we are use to in the States. 

We also made it to the top of the World Financial Centre which has the world's highest observation deck - with a glass floor - which really freaked Colten out for about the first 20 minutes of being there.  We waited until dusk so that we could see the day and night view for one admission fee. The night view was great, not only for the beautiful city lights but because of the new year celebrations, we saw fireworks shooting off as far as the eye could see - everywhere  one after another. Pretty amazing!

While in the area we took a few photo ops in front of the Oriental Pearl Tower, which Colten really wanted to go into - everytime he sees it now he say "me, go".

Let's see - - oh, and apparently fresh pressed sugar cane juice is big on the streets so we had some of that - not my thing but it was ok.

We also checked out a place we now refer to as "toy street" because it was packed with nothing but and where Drake picked up a long awaited Mickey Mouse transformer -  it was a pretty big deal for him - and only cost 20 yuan... roughly the equivalent of $3.30

At some point during our trip we found ourselves defrosting in a Toys r Us and Colten fell in love - with Pluto. He must have pushed this dog around for 2 hours so, of course, we had to buy it.

Last but not least, Shanghai is famous for their xiaolongbao so we had to go to the famous Nanxiang Dumplings at YuYuan Gardens - we tried everything on the menu - yum!

High Speed to Shanghai

For Drake's b-day weekend we headed to Shanghai via the Bullet Train. What could be as long as 4 hours by car, 2.5 hours by rail is cut down to only one hour on the High Speed train from Nanjing to Shanghai.

We were excited to ride the train and were pleasantly suprised by the comfort in the first class car. While walking to the dining car we went through the coach car, which was pretty packed and is set up similar to a bus - still for the time savings, not a bad way to travel.

For all five of us to travel first class cost about $50 USD.

Ni Hao!

(Aprx 13:30 china time) So, here we are! Pudong Airport in Shanghai China. Because we had to gather all of our stuff and were the last off the plane we had mentally prepared for the crowds, pushing, shoving, protecting our possessions – we are on high alert so to speak. So after picking our stroller up at the gate and leaving the terminal area we were surprised to find an almost empty airport. It was just us and a handful of people. Where did all of the people on our plane go? I mean it was kinda eerie. Not at all what I had imagined. We gathered our 12 bags – strapped them together and proceeded to Customs. It was so funny to me because there are two lines “to declare” and “nothing to declare” – but there was no process or force to make someone go through the declaration process, at least that I could see. After we declared nothing’ we began to look for our guide, Brett Isis from Teaching Nomad. He is the recruiter that found the opportunity at Etonkids for Andrew.

Bret arranged a taxi for us to take us to the train station. However,  after loading our bags we were told that we would need to pay an extra baggage fee to board the train and while that wasn’t much, the thought of dragging these bags in and out of transportation mediums was well just not going to happen. So we took the taxi all the way to Nanjing a 3.5 hour ride. Just what we were hoping for after a 15.5 hour plane ride!!

~Somewhere along the way we stopped for a bathroom break and a few drinks ( 3-20oz cokes and 2-20oz sprites all for about $3.17)~

The taxi was a bit costly at about 350 usd but in the grand scheme of things a great deal (by US comparison) considering the distance. It ended up working out for us in the end. Our driver who was from Shanghai got lost and had to keep stopping for directions to our hotel. Once the we got into Nanjing it didn't really bother us because it was so exciting to see all the brightly lit sites of the city. Plus for those of you who have never driven or taken a ride in China its like an NYC cab ride on HGH!! By the time we got to the hotel we were so tired, hungry and had really just ran out of steam. It was now close to 20:45. Our hotel room was really small but the manager explained to us that the next night we would be moved to the large executive suite the next night. After getting settled we headed out into an unknown chinese neighborhood looking for food. Needless to say that night we ended up eating pizza at a local shop who’s English name was “Pizza Home”. The menu read “We came from Pizza Hut but we can do it better”… It was pretty good but again, we were hungry and tired so I think that helped. Once we got back to the room we all showered and within 10 minutes I would say we were all having the deepest sleep of our life!

Flight 229 - Atlanta to Shanghai

August 21, 2011 | 5:30 am – we were headed down stairs to load up all of our baggage onto the Westin shuttle service. Aside from a few last goodbyes things went really smooth until we arrived at the airport. Now mind you, I have taken pretty detailed notes on which bags we have, and their purpose – how much weight we are allotted between what number of bags so, I was a bit surprised when we were told we must begin paying for bags – after only 7 had went down the belt. As I was trying to explain why I knew that she was mistaken… “See ma’am I have 4 sets of 3 bags …[she talks over me]… I have 4- 29” bags, 4- 25” bags and 4- 21” bags for carry-on and there is still one 25” bag sitting here [she talks over me again] - by this time Andrew is freaking out. Finally a manager comes and she didn’t really give a hoot either. These 3 women stood there and talked to us like we were completely incompetent and of course if you begin to show any irritation they act like you are going to go psycho in flight and begin saying stuff like “sir, I’m here to help you, no need to get mad” with a condescending tone. Argh! It was crazy. Finally we were allowed to go through- without the baggage fee. What a waste of time… so, good thing we got there early.

Our dads accompanied us to the airport, we all had breakfast together and chatted until it was time to pass through security. The goodbyes were short and sweet and I think it went well except that Colten was not happy to be leaving his Granddaddy behind.

Going through security took more time than we expected and was kind of a mad house going through the xray scaners with 10 bags and 3 kids. On top of all that for some reason Colten did not want to take his shoes off. Once we reached our gate we had about 15 minutes on the clock to spare however, we were rushed onto the plane and told that it was ready to take off right way… again, it was crazy breaking down the stroller, gathering the children and maneuvering 5 carryons and 5 personal items on the plane + a diaper bag that I stuffed into my bag to make it as one.

The seats were comfy and provided much needed space; Economy comfort is well worth the upgrade fee. Another perk was the all you can drink liquor, which I did indulge in between hours 3 & 6 of the flight. Afterwards I tried to sleep. I also attempted to watch Julie & Julia, pretty cute movie but it took me about 7 hours to get through the 2.5 hour movie due to walking laps around the plane with Colten. There were lots of open seats so we were able to sprawl out between 3 rows making it far more comfortable than I would have imagined. I was later told by an American woman I met in the back of the plane that this was the least crowded plane she had ever seen and she had made the trip with her children 3 times.

I thought it was pretty neat that aside from movies, music, television shows, there was a moving map option that let you see exactly where you were in real time and at the end of the flight displayed a summary of flight time, distance, altitude, etc. Overall I thought the flight went really well, our children did wonderful and the accommodations were satisfactory. The movie selection was pretty good- better than I could have imagined. Note: earbuds are provided.

My only complaint was the old white stewardesses – they just seemed so bitter the whole flight and I don’t think they ever cracked a smile. The Asian ladies were pretty nice though.