China Tour 2012 - Heading Home

People's Park Shanghai

I've got to say that flying first class is the only way to go. I started with Champagne, then water, then Bourbon, and then one of my favorite white Burgundies. On the way to Beijing I had my favorite Australian sauvingnon blanc and plenty of Champagne. The seats are big and fully recline, dinner is pretty good, and for a 13+ hour flight all of this is good. I watched Hunger Games and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I enjoyed the second and was disturbed by the first.

Enough of that. We are done with our tour of China, Wednesday night we all got umbrellas from the hotel and headed out to a neighboring hotel for dinner in an Italian restaurant. We had a fine time wrapping up our trip and planning for each of us to depart. Other than that, our Wednesday was quite sedate because the rain and the wind from the typhoon kept us inside. The mall adjoining the hotel kept us occupied for a while and we all ate KFC for lunch. I have no idea why, but KFC is all over China and very popular.

Larry's Throne and Crown

Thursday morning Larry and Dave took the Maglev to the airport and Dave saw Larry off and came back to the hotel, one of the few westerners on the subway. After breakfast the remaining bunch of us went for a walk to the Bund. It was quite hot and muggy but the rain is gone! It was good to have the typhoon move on during the night.

Back to the hotel we said our goodbyes and grabbed a taxi for the trip to the Maglev station and then rode the Maglev to the airport. That was impressive. 300 kilometers per hour in smooth comfort. I doubt we will see anything like this in the U.S. in the next 25 years. We checked in and then went to the Cathay Pacific lounge to await our flight and soon we were on our way home.

We had a wonderful 13 days in China with Claire, Audra, Ginger, Larry, and Dave. We travel well together and have a lot of fun. It is good to be able to share with friends while traveling. If we were to do it over we would change a few things, but we are happy with what we saw and did. China is a fascinating, huge country filled with many good people. In some ways they are just like us in the U.S. People were generally happy and eager to share with us. We took a lot of pictures of them and them of us. We posed with many of them.

This trip opened our eyes to China and I saw how intertwined our countries really are. Today we need each other, our economies are linked and co-dependent. We have a lot to learn from each other and people like Claire studying Chinese at The University in Hangzhou will help build that understanding. I doubt that Sharon or I will ever go back to China, but we feel this was an exceptional trip and are very glad we did it.