The Holiday in China (part one)

Okay, after that gentle hint from Emma, I guess it is time for me to update the blog with a bit of talk about our holiday in China. If that sounds about as interesting as coming over to look at our holiday slide show, then you can skip this post and any future ones which I will thoughtfully label "The Holiday in China" for you.

We flew from Brisbane direct to Narita with JL and then took a connecting flight to Shanghai. This is an excellent way to get to China and we felt it was much simpler than going via Sydney. Narita Airport was an eye-opener in itself - doors that open and turn into trains, and toilets that are more high tech than my computer. More about that later though. We took a taxi from Shanghai Pu Dong Airport into the acommodation we had booked - Celebrity Service Apartments. I had booked this hotel on the web and was really pleased with what we got for the equivalent of about $AUD80.00 a night. Also, they provide on their website the name and address of the hotel written in Chinese so you can hand it to your taxi driver. The trip itself was most unpleasant however - it was a van with no seatbelts (as is the norm) and the driver drove very fast (as is also the norm) but it seemed more dangerous than any other trip we took in China. I guess because you are sitting up so high that if anything went wrong, we would have all been propelled throught the windscreen.

The hotel had two bedrooms, each with a double bed, and a bathroom. There was no living area, just two cupboards to put your suitcases in. I wouldn't have wanted to stay there for a week, but for our short visit of two nights, it was excellent. I did take pictures of it to show you but Scott's computer ate all our photos from the first two days so unfortunately they were lost.

We woke up on our first morning in China and raced out to our balcony to see just what was outside. It was quite an eye opener. Everything was covered in a haze and all you could see in any direction was buildings. To our right was a school and we could watch the children going onto parade at 7.30am, the usual time for school to start in China. We took the easy option of breakfast in the hotel for our first morning, then headed out to explore Shanghai.