Arriving in China

We departed our home in Georgetown at 9 am for our 1:30 pm departure from Cincinnati airport. As we have done on prior trips from CVG, we used the OneStopParking through the Hilton Hotel near the airport. We arrived at the Hilton in less than an hour and caught the included shuttle to our gate at 10 am. We both made it through security quickly and easily and had our lunch at the gate after walking around the concourse several times. There are nice displays in the concourses from the Cincinnati Museum Center as well as beautiful photos of iconic Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky attractions. We knew that our flight would be long and we wanted to move as much as possible before we had to be confined to an airplane seat.

The connecting flight to Detroit departed and landed on time. We were surprised that the Detroit airport was rather small and appeared to serve only Delta flights. However, while the airport is generally small, the main concourse is extremely long. There is even an overhead train that transports passengers to stops within Concourse A. Since we had a 90 minute layover we walked through the long concourse A as well as much smaller B & C. We were very surprised that there were no displays for tourists on the industrial or music history of the city. We would have thought that a display of vintage cars or photos of early factories would be set up. About the only “Detroit thing” was that in the tunnel between concourses there was Motown music playing.

Our flight from Detroit to Shanghai departed on time for the over 13 hour trip over the North Pole. The aircraft was as comfortable as it could be for a flight of that length. Passengers were a mix of tourists, business people and Chinese nationals returning home. Meals on the flight were good having choices between American or Chinese dishes. The seatback screens offered a good variety of classic and newer movies. I watched Won’t you be my Neighbor?, Chappaquidick, and several others in addition to turning the language option to German to watch classics like Back to the Future

We arrived in Shanghai around 6:30 pm local time which was 6:30 am by our body clocks. Getting through entry to China was interesting. We had completed a through application for our tourist visas then filled out more forms at the airport. Coming through the entry we were photographed again and fingerprinted. Since this is for all non-Chinese citizens, it took a while to get through. One Asian woman ahead of Mary in line took forever to get an electronic scan of her fingerprints. We picked up our bags and quickly found the Viking representatives who took us to the bus carrying us from the airport across the city to our hotels. A quick stop in the bathrooms provided our first surprise in China. Although there were some western style toilets, most of the bathroom stalls were porcelain holes in the floor. There were symbols on the doors of the stalls identifying which kind of facility was in that stall. We made a note for future reference to look for the US toilets if possible in going to the bathrooms.

We were surprised to learn that Shanghai is the world’s second largest city with over 25 million residents. Another 10 million commute in from the surrounding area each day. With a total of 10 million residents, New York City is dwarfed by Shanghai.  As we drove in our guides pointed out local landmarks and attractions. We are anxious to see more of the city.

Our hotel, the Four Seasons, is a beautiful luxury downtown hotel. Our room on the 22nd floor is very nice, and the Whittingtons are just up on the 24th floor. Our guides told us to only drink bottled water in China using tap water only for washing. We meet our guide, Patrick, at 8 am on Friday for a tour of the city including the famous gardens. We are sorry that we will be unable to meet up with my former student, Keri, and her family while we are here but the schedule is just packed full.