China – 18 November – Shanghai

Arrival in Shanghai was pretty uneventful.  I quickly make it through the check-in/registration process and to the baggage claim.  Of course my bag had to be the last bag on to the conveyor.  Like many systems, the baggage comes up at one end of the conveyor from the lower level and drops onto the conveyor. Some one at the end where they were dropped onto the oval conveyor must have been organizing them because they were in perfect order when the came around to me.  Lined up nice and neat, right next to each other with tops up.

I found Eric and Lynn very quickly and they took me out to the van, which was very much like our 7 person vans, rather spacious, with captain seats for the centre row.  It was strange to have a lady wanting to take my bags from me and load them in the van and then opening the door for me, making sure I am okay and closing the door, etc.  But she is the “chauffeur”.

We drove through Shanghai which has a population of about 25,000,000 people.  Even though there is a one child policy here, the city is growing very quickly.  There was a lot of construction going on.  There was a lot of smog.  I was told that it was really bad a couple days earlier.  However, the smog is not from vehicle or manufacturing pollution but from the farmers burning their fields after the harvest and in preparation for the next planting.

There were also a lot of high rise apartments. A lot!  It is interesting to see laundry hanging out of windows and off of balconies 20 and 30 floor up.

Lynn drove us to the Howard Johnson - Huaihai which is in the French quarter of Shanghai.  By this time I was too tired to think about taking pictures.  I checked in with the help of Eric and got to my room.  Next time I think I can manage this myself.

The room is beautiful.  Quite large and with a the largest bathroom that I have seen in my hotel room.  The tub and the shower are separate.  The shower is glassed in with a two foot wide floor to ceiling frosted glass window which could produce some interesting shows if more than one person were staying in the room.  Time for bed.

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