On the road

  Shanghai, China
Wednesday, April 16, 2008

It is amazing how a shower can invigorate you after a long day of traveling. Even-though I have been up for over 24 hours now, I have enough energy to start this blog.

My day began in Washington on April 15th around 0400. It is funny how the airlines recommend that you show up 2hours before your scheduled flight but they (Delta) did not have any check-in booths open when I showed up. Besides that minor inconvenience, my flight to China was fantastic. On both the connector and the main flight, I had no one in the middle seat, so there was plenty of sprawling out room.

I must say I am a big fan of the 777. The personnel entertainment screen makes it easier to occupy yourself during the 16 hour flight. I watched 2 3/4 movies and I am the top scorer on the In-flight Trivia, Bejeweled & Galaga. Of course I probably should have spent some time sleeping.

I decided to be a little adventurous and use public modes of transportation to get to my hotel. They have a Mag Lev train connecting the Pudong International Airport to the Shanghai metro system. For 40 RMB ($6.5) you can ride the train. I expected that the train would outrun the cars on the highway but I did not think the train would give the planes taking off a run for their money. I was puzzled when half way through the ride people started taking pictures in the car. In my sleep deprived fog I did not see that they posted digital speedometers at both ends of the car. The train reached a maximum speed of 430 km/h which is about 250 mph.

Speedometer

My adventures continued when I passed the taxi stands at the end of the train station and rode the Metro. It was a little difficult at first to determine what my fare should be since everything was in Chinese except for the instruction "Select correct fare". My original strategy of matching symbols on the kiosk to the symbols in my travel guide map failed miserably. Plan B was to count the number of stops between stations. It must have been my lack of sleep again because I rode one stop to far. The good news...the walk in the April shower cleared my mind a little.

That's it for now. I am going to grab a little something to eat at a night stall and plan tomorrow's fun.