Shanghai--Day 1

After leaving Beijing, the next two days were spent at sea.

During the day we enjoyed listening to a very good speaker, Francis O'Donnell, who with Denis Belliveau retraced Marco Polo's journey from Venice to Anatolia, Persia, India and China in 1993-95.

We watched their  documentary, entitled "In the Footsteps of Marco Polo".  It is a 2008 Emmy Award nominated PBS documentary film. The movie documents the first quest "to visit and document every region Marco Polo claimed to have traveled" using only land and sea methods of transportation.

They "encountered Mongol horsemen and hostile Chinese security officers and survived a firefight between Afghan factions. In the spirit of Polo's journey -- and to prove a point regarding the authenticity of his account -- they disdained airplanes, traveling by foot, on horses and camels and by jeep, boat and train."

It was a very interesting film; I highly recommend watching it if you can find it on PBS or Netflix, etc.

Our traveling group also went to one of the specialty restaurants on the ship called Qsine, which offers a "Uniquely Unordinary" dining experience.

 We started by ordering our appetizers, entrees, desserts, etc. on a notebook.

 Each course was presented in some unique fashion...here's just a few

It definitely was "unordinary" and a lot of fun!

Then we reached Shanghai where we disembarked the ship after another long wait for Chinese immigration to clear the ship and another long line to stand in to go through immigration/customs individually.

We met our guide and arrived at our hotel, the Ocean Hotel Shanghai by 1:00.  Our rooms were ready--they were spacious and wonderful!

 The television swiveled so it could be watched from sofa or bed.

Our guide, Joe, surprised us by offering a one-of-a-kind tour....a ride on the only MagLev (magnetic levitation) train in the world--the world's fastest commercially operating train.

internet photo

We call it a bullet train!  It's route in Shanghai goes from the city center to the airport...a 7-minute ride each way.

Hang on......

I made a new friend during the 7-minute ride to the airport.

At the airport stop, we were able to get out of the train and take a few photos before it was time to reboard for the ride back to the city.

This train was built in 1996 at a cost of $800 million US.  China has 25,000 km of bullet train tracks and abandoned plans to build more MagLev trains due to fears of what extended periods of time might do to the human body due to the strong magnetic field.  A 7-minute trip is just fine....a several hour trip like from Shanghai to Beijing...NOT!

A monitor showed the speed of the train...

 Wait for it....

Bingo!  We reached the highest speed of 431 kilometers per hour or 268 miles per hour!

It was a blast!

 We totally loved the experience.

It was then dinner at the hotel and off to bed as tomorrow will be a full-day tour of Shanghai and then a dinner/acrobatic show at night!


To continue reading, scroll up towards the top of this page and click in the right-hand column the entry entitled:  Shanghai--Day 2.