Sunday, July 22, 2012

first stop, shanghai

I didn't write another post like I promised because I realized that all my Shanghai pictures were on Alex's laptop (I didn't bring mine) and we didn't see each other since we were both jet lagged. Sorry about that!

The day after my dreaded CMA exam, was our flight to China. It took us about 18 hours to get there and my butt was really hurting by the time we got off the plane. Someone from our tour was supposed to pick us up in Shanghai. We eventually found him by some stroke of luck because he was being a lazy butt and wasn't even holding up the sign at the arrivals' gate.

On our way to the hotel, Alex was super excited and told me to take pictures of everything but I just wanted to sleep.


This was the first picture I took in Shanghai

What you notice about China right away is that it's very dirty and heavily populated (sounds obvious I know). But wherever you're going, you'll notice endless towers of apartments with endless floors and the air is very very polluted. The smog is always present and you rarely see the sun and/or clouds.


Apartment Buildings



We finally reached our hotel, which I totally forgot the name of it. It's supposed to be a 5 star hotel but it's more like a 3 star for our standards. Another thing you notice about China right away, is that they like to exaggerate, sometimes a lot.


Our hotel



It looks pretty nice from the outside and it's not too bad on the inside but when you're told that it's a 5 star hotel, you're expected to be wowed.



Our Room


The interesting (and slightly annoying thing) about our Shanghai trip was that every day we had to check out and check into a new hotel, with the exception of the first and last night. Our first and last night in Shanghai were at the same hotel. The reason was we would visit a new city or town every day but it was still annoying to pack and unpack every night. It was good because we got to visit new hotels and most of them were amazing (although one was really really crap) but annoying because of the packing issue.

That's all for today! Sorry it was such a short post, but I have to get ready for lunch at my Godfather's and I'll be there all day since he wants to hear about my trip.

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