UMTravels

Met Marty and Eric for breakfast. Good to see them again. The breakfast buffet was nothing short of stunning. From raw fish, to Cheerios, to Dim Sum to pastries, to the standard make to order eggs. I really must take photos tomorrow morning. It’s spread across THREE rooms so it won’t fit in one photo.

Our “David” group seems pretty agile – no skelators on board. This mornings tour was of the Yuyuan Garden and Old Shanghai. The hotel is in new Shanghai – the area on the other side of the river that was farm land twenty years ago is now all high rises, condos, shopping malls – very Nuevo Urban. The gardens are something like 800 years old, and now in the middle of the city surrounded by the bazaar of shops and restaurants including all the favorites: McDonalds, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Starbucks.

Next stop was a dangerous one for me…a silk rug factory. It only cost me $900 to get out of there. Ended up with a 3×5 pure silk rug knotted at 600 knots per square inch and an unusual old style pattern on it. Definitely not a new rug. Amazing imperial saffron coloring including the warp. Luckily it is small enough and light weight enough to go in my suitcase. It reminds me of when I was in Greece years ago to go sailing with Kevin, Claire, Rachel, Evan, and the woman’s name I can never remember. I got to Kos a day or two early and took the ferry to Turkey and ended up buying the Kilim that was in the living room of the Capital Hill house. Maybe this is a good omen – I bought that carpet at the beginning of a long trip and carried it the whole way – just like I’m about to do now.

Lunch was a dim sum style affair of Shanghai style Chinese cooking, complete with a can of the local beer. So far, the food has been excellent on this trip. Now if the heat would go back into the normal range that would help. Lots of showers in that lovely marble bathroom. If the rest of the trip is like this – the $5050 dollars I paid (includes air and single supplement) will be worth it.

Maybe I should have come to Shanghai a couple of days early…getting the feeling that there is much more to see and do – and not enough time. We have a couple of hours of free time this afternoon which I’m using for this journal, and a glass or two of scotch.

Odd things about this hotel. 1) For ice, you have to call housekeeping and they come and fill your little bucket. 2) The tap water isn’t drinkable. They provide you with three half bottles per day (which is handy for all the touring we are doing). Millions of dollars spent to build this place (and it is grand, definitely 5-star) and no water filtration system. Are they waiting for the infrastructure of Shanghai to catch up with them? I love Eric’s comment about Mexican hotels – they KNOW the infrastructure won’t catch up with them, so they just build the system in.

Eric and Marty are slated to drop by for a pre-dinner drink at 4:30 – since we have to be on the bus at 5:15. Not much time for relaxing on this schedule. Tonight is a welcome dinner and acrobat show. Later, my plan is to go out to hear a jazz combo that the drummer and the piano player are friends of my buddy Mark Pucci from Boston – jazz musician, teacher, second string bass player for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Luckily, they are playing at the Ritz-Carlton, which is right next to the place that we are seeing the acrobat show.

Even had time this afternoon to write a postcard to Steve, my prison buddy from Montana. Didn’t get time for a nap with all the writing and scotch. Just for a baseline, weighed myself – and the answer is 225 (about 30 pounds heavier than I should be to look good in my tuxedo).

In the picture to the right, our hotel is just to the right of the largest sphere you can see to the right of Marty. A close up is below. Twenty years ago – the area behind Marty and I was all rice paddies and farm land.

Dinner was another round robin of food, was just OK – many of the meat products had lots of bones in them, but the free beer was welcome. This time the beer was Tsing Tao – in a can.

The acrobat show started at 7:30 and ended at nine. They were great performers, but the music was a little choppy – sort of a Riverdance with Chinese acrobats – my friend Javier would have loved it since he has been working on the Mexican version of Riverdance. Personally it should have be called hotties in spandex costumes (which means Helene and my mother would have loved it). My problem was that it was right after dinner, and the theatre warmed up as the performance went along – making me want to sleep all the more. The other odd factor was that the seating assistants were more like seating Nazis – the theatre was half full, but they made people sit in their assigned seats – to the point of moving people around repeatedly. Bureaucracy dies hard I guess.

After the show we checked in with “David” and told him we were going to listen to jazz at the Ritz-Carlson and that we’d make our own way home. Met the piano player, who was nice – and talented. Wow, could he play. Marty and Eric had beers, I had a couple of gin and tonics — $34.50. Word to the wise – don’t drink in hotel bars.

On the flip side – the taxi home was cheap – something like $3.00. Got the tour of Marty and Eric’s room on the 25^th floor. Better view, same bathroom.

Early to bed for me, luggage has to be out by 7am – which is when I meet up with Marty and Eric for breakfast. Bus leaves at 8am for our two tours and meeting up with the boat.