We spent our last two nights in Shanghai, where we'd never been before. Not enough time to see much, but we did visit the Jing An temple (beautiful), shopped on Nanjing Rd (intense) and took a cruise on the Huangpu River (cloudy, but watching the tops of the tall buildings appear and disappear in the clouds was worth the price). To me, Shanghai doesn't have as definite a sense of place as the other major cities we visited, but that may be only because we stayed such a short time.
The only disappointment was our hotel -- a very quaint, very centrally located small hotel called the Old House Inn. Upside: central (as I said), quiet, secure (everyone has to walk right past the desk, which is staffed 24 hours a day). Downside: dark rooms, no elevator, no Chinese breakfast. This is the only hotel that I would not stay in again.
Our trip home was a bit rough, as our flight was delayed about 10 hours. The plane was late in arriving from Newark, apparently due to equipment problems, so we were stuck in Pudong Airport and didn't take off until about 2 am. It wasn't horrible, since Pudong is new, not crowded and has plenty of shops where we used up our last yuan, but it meant we didn't get in to Newark until 4:30 this morning (the 12 hour time difference means flying time was about 14 1/2 hours.
I miss China, but it's nice to be home. It's especially nice not to live out of a suitcase.
Over the next few days, I'll be posting more thoughts about our trip, and more pictures.
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