On the Way Back...

Last night was great… Best dinner of the trip, and the followed up with a wonderful cruise on the river that runs between the old and new sides of Shanghai… Even though it rained a bit, and was a bit wet all night, it wasn’t too wet and we had a great time talking about the week… The architecture on both the new and old Shanghai is amazing… Barely believable that the new part of the city has been mostly built since 2000… And in the early 90’s it was a rice farm…

Then we went back to the the hotel for maybe the best night’s sleep of the week, and didn’t have to get up until about 7:30 to go to breakfast… Great breakfast buffet at the hotel, with all kinds of interesting Chinese dishes that would not normally be found at that time of the day (or any other in some cases…). Then a few of us took a short walk to the Pearl Tower, and went to the top where there is a glass floor that you can walk out on that you are looking down 90 floors under your feet… I couldn’t go out, until finally a few Chinese tourists sort of forced me out to take my picture with them… (the four of us were the only Americans that I saw the entire time there…) Then the barrage of photo taking started with group after group asking us to have our picture taken with them… Caught us off guard, but it was fun… Then after coming down, we walked by the Shanghai Apple store, and of course, I had to go in and look around… Then back to the hotel, a quick shower, and then off to a very nice lunch before the bus to the airport left…

The airport was pretty easy to get through, and all of the lines moved quickly… Got on the plane (it is an older 777 that didn’t have the great pods the other did in business class, but still very comfortable and infinitely better than coach…) and the off to home…