Day 8 of the Adventure
Forgive me but since I'm not doing this the day after anymore, I can't remember a lot of the times for the morning meetup.
Anyway, as we met in the morning to board the bus to the hotel, Jennae was sorting out our boxed lunches. Yes, again, we were getting boxed lunches from the Shangri La Guilam because
ABD didn't want us to rely on the airline supplied lunch... just in case it was ... squid paste (hey, the guides said this, not me.) So off we trudged onto the bus with our tuna sandwiches. (Ugh...I do not want to see another tuna sandwich in a very long time). As I mentioned earlier, we were given orange juice in the boxes and some people abandoned them at the hotel. We were told just to make sure we had drank them before heading to security.
Our guide Joyce (i have a hard time remembering some of the guides because at one point, it seemed they all started with the letter "J"
) spoke a bit more about Guilam and then sang us a song.
Arriving at the airport, we met Daisy, Steven and Joe who had checked all of our luggage and gotten our boarding passes. Daisy handed back our passports and we went to security. My family gave our orange juices and some sealed bottles of water to a lady whose job, I think, was cleaning up the area where people left their liquids. We told her the bottles were still sealed, in case she didn't notice, and she smiled and took off with her free drinks. We all said good-bye to Joyce and went through security. Its interesting to note that our flight from Beijing to Chengdu was mostly filled with Chinese as was our flight to Xian. Our flight from Xian to Guilam however filled up with tourists from Germany (I think). The number of tourists flourished in Guilam and the flight to Shanghai was loaded with tourists ... some who probably came with us from Xian! By the way, it wasn't squid paste but chicken and rice on the plane. It's always chicken and rice.
Even if you don't want the chicken and rice or hot meal, take the little box it comes with ... it has a bottle of water in it along with some other stuff you may be interested in (wetnap, salad, cookies).
When we got to Shanghai, Daisy and the shadows again raced to baggage claim while we assembled in the area outside the jetway. Jennae announced that we had reached Shanghai and all the toilets were very happy and western. Us women practically ran to the toilet.
Shanghai signified the end of the Toilet Adventures.... thank goodness. When we arrived in baggage claim, Daisy, the shadows (Steven and Joe) and the porters were still grabbing our bags. We waited in an area out of the way with Jennae and our Shanghai guide who I can't believe I can't remember her name, until 5 porters pushing carts of our luggage passed us and we followed them out. (We only had 26 people --guests and guides -- on our tour. It will be interesting to see how many porters will be needed for the 40 plus tours in June.) The luggage got loaded into a big white van while we loaded onto a bus.
On the bus we were told that when we arrived at the Peninsula Shanghai, we would be taken to the boardroom where we we would be given a presentation on how our room works.
They weren't kidding!!! We sat down in this board room, then hotel staff members came to each family with the room keys and then started the Powerpoint presentation on how to operate the curtains, the lights, the nail dryer, the bathtub, the free coffee maker (Nexpresso!!!!!), the VOIP free international calling, etc. etc. etc. And then ... we went to our room. Holy crap. The BEST hotel I've ever stayed in. My brother and I had adjoining rooms with my parents so we had a community foyer and then our separate rooms ... it was like one huge suite. I love expresso and the coffeemaker in the room was to die for. I mean, if I could have that instead of the Keurig, I would but these machines cost a small fortune. There was a dressing room ... a DRESSING ROOM!! The shower had a rainforest shower head. It was a beautiful room. Our luggage soon arrived and then we received a small fruit platter.
We met in the lobby at 6:00 for dinner. The bus took us to M on the Bund. We had been told earlier that if we wanted to dress up, this was the night to do it. Some people dressed up and others didn't. It was no biggie. Dinner was French.
Ok, so here is one of my complaints about this ABD tour. At the beginning of the tour, they provided Chinese cuisine almost ad nausem but once we left Beijing, we had only one Chinese meal (our arrival dinner in Chengdu) and this would persist until our last night in Shanghai.
So dinner tonight was French ... a choice of Lamb or smoked salmon. Well, beware ... when most of us read smoked salmon, we thought smoked salmon like lox. My parents do not eat lamb or smoked salmon so they were in a quandry. They thought of ordering the kids steak and fries. We told Jennae and the restaurant manager came and suggested that they could make them a chicken dish because the kids steak wasn't big enough for an adult. (My mom would argue that but my dad probably wouldn't.) So my parents got a chicken dish. Well, the smoked salmon came an was a salmon that wasn't lox but a salmon prepared in a way my parents would have eaten it. It was, in essence, a salmon steak. My parents' chicken dish turned out to be something like Chicken Marakesh (according to one of our fellow ABDers who loves Morrocco in Epcot...
). My mom liked it but my dad wasn't impressed.
We went out onto the terrace of the restaurant that looked onto the amazing skyline of new Shanghai. We took many photos, probably annoying all the diners on the terrace but we have the power of the Mouse behind us so we didn't care.
After dinner, we were given a choice of walking back to the hotel or going back on the coach. Most of us decided to walk back. Some of the older ABDers, including my parents, decided to take the coach. It wasn't a long walk back so I think my parents could have made the walk back.
My brother and I walked along the Bund back to the hotel taking a lot of night photos. One thing that has struck me about China is the large number of people smoking. I thought Europe was bad but China (and Hong Kong) were worse. Practically everybody smokes. As a non-smoker, I was glad to see that nobody on our tour smoked but the populace smokes so you can't get away from it. Even as we walked along the river, it's not fresh air you smell but cigarette smoke. Oh well...
There's a clock tower in that area ... listen to it chime. Every 15 minutes it'll chime but on the hour, it'll do the extensive chime song. Those going in May and June ... lets see if you recognize the tune.
We got back to our room and I made myself a decaf coffee
and that was the end of Day 8.