Home from Shanghai - at least physically we are.

So I thought you would get a kick out of my first night in Shanghai, after the death-defying ride in the taxi from the airport, dead tired, buried in the bed of covers because of the ice cave that Craig had created in our hotel room! (It's so hot and humid there that he had the air conditioning cranked all the time, so I called it our Ice Cave.)

Here's another picture of this Granny Geek, working on my e-mail for HP and this blog. Notice how bundled up I am because it was ICE COLD in there and Craig was still too warm! We had such a great time. :-)

I'm really bummed I don't have a picture of Jenny, a lady I met on my flight from Tokyo to Shanghai. She grew up in Shanghai and was returning to visit family and friends. We exchanged e-mail addresses but weren't able to get together until my last day there. She took me down in the Shanghai Subway, which I was too nervous to go into by myself. Not only did she show me how it worked, but tested me to make sure I knew where to get the tickets, how to tell which subway train I wanted and which line, and to be sure to always argue prices with the stores down there. There is a whole separate world under there and it's all shopping! We took the subway to the Xianghang market and did some shopping and ate lunch at a local Chinese restaurant. Later that night we met up with Craig and tried another Chinese restaurant and I'm bummed we didn't get pictures of either. We must have had 6 large bowls of food to share and it only cost us about $20. We had a great time and I only wish we could have gotten together my first day there. She taught me a lot. I'm hoping to meet up with her next year in Shanghai, maybe taking our kids too!
So we're home now and still suffering jet lag. We haven't gotten more than 3-4 hours sleep at one time yet. We're getting lots of work done but burning the candle at both ends is catching up with us. I think part of my sleep problem is that I'm dreaming I'm still in Shanghai. I dream about the gardens in the parks and the buildings and lights at night. We experienced so much in the 7 days we were actually being a part of the Shanghai living that it's like my mind is consumed and can't let go of the images. Since this blog wasn't supposed to be about Shanghai but more about Grandma turning into a geek I'm creating a web page with a lot more pictures and the learnings we had in our travel there. If you haven't thought of International travel because of the chaos in our world I would implore you to check out going to Shanghai. And if you do,be sure to check out this link and get at least this book as an invaluable guide. I'm already planning what I'm going to do and see next time I get to go!
http://hornbyshanghaitravel.blogspot.com/