Day 2 - Arrival in Shanghai (Continuation of Day 1)

DoubleTree Jing'an

We arrived slightly ahead of schedule at 12:40 pm and because we were able to sleep just a little and had some extra room, the flight wasn’t terrible and we weren’t super tired. It was a long flight but not unbearable. Clearing customs in Shanghai took a while. Digital fingerprinting, facial recognition, passport control and scanning of baggage as you left took an hour or more. Not sure what they were looking for in the scanning. We got some yuan (CYN) from an ATM (not easy to find) and took a taxi to our hotel. The ride took about an hour in traffic and cost 280 CYN, which is the equivalent of about 40 USD. Well worth it. You can take public transportation but who wants to drag your luggage around.

We are staying at the DoubleTree Jing’an which is a newish hotel in the chain but of course they are still remodeling so the Executive lounge is still closed. Bummer. In theory that is a perk we are supposed to get with our credit card. They did upgrade our room and it is large, very quiet, comfortable and it has a nice view over the city so we have no complaints.

Hot Pot and Tsing Tao

We immediately took a 3 hour nap to catch up on our sleep and then went out to find some place to eat. We walked around the neighborhood and found a small “hot pot” restaurant. Think of fondue in our terms. No one spoke English so we used phone apps to communicate and it worked pretty well. It was actually pretty funny because we had five people helping us at one point and everyone was laughing. Probably at us, but in a good way. The head lady cooked most of our meal.  We had very thinly sliced beef cooked in a clear broth at the table with Satay (peanut) sauce and wrapped the cooked beef in lettuce leaves. It was delicious. We walked back to the hotel and picked up supplies (water and snacks) for our tour tomorrow. All in all a pretty good first day.