Shanghai, China

On Monday, June 24 Kevin and I flew to Shanghai, China. We woke up around 5:30am and took a taxi from our hotel in NYC to JFK airport. We flew 6 hours to San Francisco, had a short layover, and then flew 12 hours to Shanghai. We arrived in Shanghai around 5:30pm on Tuesday, June 25. We collected our luggage and proceeded out to the taxi stand. On the way out we were attacked by human vultures! There were people everywhere trying to persuade us to allow them to take us to our hotel. Fortunately we were able to get to the taxi stand without getting distracted and our fare was ½ of what the vultures would have charged us. We got to the hotel around 7:00pm, showered, and went down to the Irish Pub connected to our hotel for dinner. We were exhausted from the flight and from the busy weekend in NYC so we crashed around 9:00pm.

We woke up around 4:00am on Wednesday and struggled to fall back asleep. Around 9:00am we went downstairs and ate at the breakfast buffet. It is always so interesting to see the different foods offered for breakfast around the world. Our options ranged from traditional Chinese food (dim sum, Asian noodles, etc.) to pastries, to eggs and bacon, to salads. It was a decent spread of food, but not worth the price. After breakfast, we took a very short walk around the hotel, and then went back to our room. We left the hotel around noon to explore the city. We walked to the Century Ave metro station and took the metro to the Jing’An Temple. We paid 60CNY (about $5/person) to go inside and we were pleasantly surprised. It always fascinates me to watch different cultural and religious rituals. We spent about 45 minutes at the Temple and then took the metro to Nanjing Road. This street is full of shops and restaurants and people trying to sell you watches and bags. It is certainly an experience. There were not nearly as many “vultures” this time as there were when we were here in 2009, but there were definitely still a few. We walked over to the Bund for a little while and then took the metro back to our hotel. We got back to the hotel around 4:00pm and fell asleep around 5!

Kevin being a goof on our way to the temple.

A panoramic view of the front of the Jing'An Temple. It was fascinating to see the contrast of old and new. 

The entrance to the temple. 

Exquisite doors!

We threw coins onto this sculpture. Jing'an translates to Peace and Tranquility. I think if you can get a coin to stay on this sculpture, it will bring you peace and tranquility. So we of course had to give it a try. 

This was in massive piece of carved stone or marble. 

This is Buddha in the Precious Hall of the Great Hero.

Here is a panoramic view of the inside of the temple. 

A 3-dimensional mural inside the Precious Hall of the Great Hero. 

Beautiful and intricate wood carvings were all over the temple. 

This s the roof of one of the halls. I would love to have a gold roof!

Many people on Nanjing Road...although. not nearly as many as the last time we visited. 

A side street off of Nanjing Road. 

The CBD skyline from The Bund.

Gotta love the selfies!

We woke up around midnight on Wednesday night/Thursday morning and struggled to go back to sleep. I think I fell asleep again around 2:30am and was awake for the day around 4am. Jet-lag is not fun! The weather was horrible all day on Thursday so we stayed at the hotel all day. We walked over to the 7-11 and purchased some snacks for the day and then ordered room service for lunch. We spent a good bit of time on the internet, watching Criminal Minds, and playing Scrabble.  We fell asleep again around 5pm only to be woken up by the housekeeping staff around 7pm. I do not understand why they can’t just honor the do not disturb sign on the door.  They repeatedly placed cards under our door and then called the room (twice) around 7pm. When we didn’t answer the phone they came to door and when we didn’t answer the door they entered the room! I was so angry!!! And of course the language barrier is huge and it was difficult to tell them we didn’t need anything.

Some of our snacks for the day. 

Our room service lunch. 

SIDE NOTE: On June 12 I had an interview for a full-time teaching position at Monroe Elementary, a school I have subbed at consistently for 4 years and was really hoping to teach at full-time. I called my voicemail from Skype earlier in the day and had a phone call from the Human Resources Department stating that they wanted to offer me a full-time position at Monroe teaching 3^rd grade! I was so excited, but unfortunately it was about 10pm at home when I got the message. I couldn’t wait to call them back and accept the position, but it would have to wait a few more hours.

I woke up around 3am on Friday morning because I wanted to make sure I was able to speak to someone in the Human Resources Department. I wasn’t able to go back to sleep after I made the call (and accepted the position!) so Kevin and I patiently waited until 8:45am to go down to the lobby.  We had one of the concierge at the hotel write the address of the cruise port in Chinese and then communicated for us with the taxi driver. The language barrier was quite a struggle. We got to the port around 9:45am and got to the ship relatively easy. When we got to the ship we were told we needed a boarding pass in order to get on the ship. We waited for another 45 minutes for the Port Agent to process the passes and then we were able to work. We completed our work and ate lunch on the ship.  We finished work around 2:00 and then started our journey back to the hotel. We had the address for the hotel written in Chinese and one taxi driver wouldn’t take us – I think it was too far for him to go, but our second attempt to get a taxi was successful. We got back to the hotel around 3pm and decided to stay in rather than go back out and have to deal with more issues. We fell asleep around 4pm and woke up around 10pm for dinner. We ate dinner at the Pub and then went back to sleep.

We woke up around 6:00am on Saturday morning and couldn’t wait to check out of our hotel and head home. Unfortunately, our flight didn’t leave Shanghai until about 4:00pm and we knew we wouldn’t be able to check in for our flight until at least 12:00pm, so we hung out in our room until about 11am. It was much nicer to sit in our room than to sit at the airport (and we had free internet in our room). We got to the airport around 12:15pm and still had to wait about 30 minutes before we could check in for our flight. We almost gave up our seats because the flight was sold out, but the reward was not quite what we had hoped. We flew from Shanghai to Chicago and Chicago to Colorado Springs. The travel day was rather uneventful and we were so happy to get home and be back in our comfort zone!