Hello from Shanghai!

I know . . . fricken weird sounding, eh? Right now it's 4:10PM Monday, September 08, in Shanghai - which means that it's 4:10AM Monday in Ohio.

We've been here for a little over 24 hours now . . . and done more than we could begin to write. I came less-than-prepared, assuming that these PC's here would have card readers so that I could upload my pictures from the camera. No such love. Maybe I'll post a "Flip" video.

[*update - tried it - no such love*]

Highlights so far . . .

Sunday
The flight was 13 hours 47 minutes. We arrived at 1:42PM Sunday (1:42 AM for those who know what time we left Ohio). Double-decker plane . . . my guess was that capacity is 600 - and like 500 were Chinese. Pretty cool.

Free time after we arrived at St. Regis hotel, same evening . . . we ate on the Huangpu river at an Italian place (I know, I know) called "The Kitchen". Everyone else ate at the hotel (we're the obvious adventurous ones here).

Monday

• Toured some beautiful grounds at Yuhan Gardens. Shopped at a local marked where we haggled for some cheap knock-offs (*so fun*).
• We had "authentic" Chinese for lunch, complete with Dim Sum. After lunch we skipped out on the Museum Tour (meh) in lieu of seeing more of Shanghai - went to the Observation Deck of Jin Mao Tower.
• Took a quick dip in the pool . . .
• Tonight - dinner, then off to see world-reknowned Chinese [Shanghai] Acrobats.
• Hopefully, we'll meet a friend of ours (Bob) for a drink afterward.

Tomorrow - we fly out of Shanghai for Wuhan, where we'll board our Yangtze River cruise ship.

Okay . . . we're going to try to post daily - but no guarantees. Later!

Oh - "soft drinks" over here include BEER. I love China.
Also . . . traffic is a fricken hoot. There's all kinds of structure to enable it (i.e. traffic lights, painted roads, signs, etc.) but all the rules are out the door.