Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
MeznG. In the air, on the road, river or sea again
Our final dinner last night was as always very entertaining and a lot of fun. We have been so fortunate with company we have had and our waiters were exceptional. Dom, our waiter is 40, he is married with 4 children and has been working on cruise ships for 20 years. He is heading home today after 10 months on board so he's quite excited to be going to see his family. Jeffrey our junior waiter is 34, he has been married for 6 years but although they have tried, they have no children yet. He's quite open talking about it with us. They do have 4 dogs however so they are his children. They are such nice people, both from just outside Manila. When we left the restaurant, as usual, the last to leave we exchanged hugs with the boys and our 2 Lorraine's and Roberta and Stewart. We have contact details so staying in touch is on the cards. Bonus for us, Jeffrey was on breakfast shift this morning, so he found us a table and made sure we were taken care of, but I did decline his cappuccino this morning. Departing the ship was seamless although it did take an hour before our bus left the port. We were on the earliest bus to Narita airport which is a 90 minute drive from Yokohama. Some of the passengers on our bus had 11am flights so they would have been cutting it pretty fine. Narita airport was not as hectic as I thought it might be but our flight is not open for check in so we go looking for..........coffee I bet you guessed that! Check in opened and at about the same time we were advised that our flight was delayed an hour. No big deal for us except for trying to contact the people about our transfer to let them know we had no other plans for today. When we arrive in Shanghai its a bit of a shock straight away. After the polite and gentle Japanese we are thrown in with a bunch of loud pushy Chinese. We are met by our guide who puts us in our car for the transfer to the hotel. Wow what a ride. The first half is mostly freeway and crazy they are. Roads going everywhere. Over and under and round. It's mind blowing. The second half is eventful but thankfully without incident. We are in the middle of the Shanghai traffic and there is no rules it would seem. Cars, buses, taxis are merging when there clearly isn't any room but while there is no speed involved because there are just too many vehicles it seems to work. The cars definitely gave horns and the drivers know how to use them. To distract from the traffic we take in the view. It appears we are a few layers of road up and the lights are spectacular. It's actually raining so no point taking photos but wow! As we get closer to our hotel motor scooters and push bikes and pedestrians are added into the mix. We are gob smacked that no one gets hit. Our hotel is one the Holiday Inn chain and its huge. It has taken more than 2 hours to get here so it's now after 9.30. After a shower we went to the restaurant for dinner and that's another experience as the waitresses have very little English. They were a bit surprised when we asked for the Chinese menu instead of the western one but we eventually get on the same page and have an enjoyable meal of noodles and rice. At the end of the meal we are escorted to the elevator by our waitress. A huge negative we have come across is smoking!!! It's allowed inside the hotels and even eating areas. Yuck! We decide to take our life in our own hands and go for a walk. It's raining a bit and so busy. Luckily there is an overpass so we can get across the other side without a problem. We are getting picked up at 11.30 in the morning to go to the Shanghai airport for our flight to Tunxi for our Yellow Mountain adventure.
- comments