Sorry about the sketchy nature of this report, but Joanie and I are both exhausted. We promise to post more complete entries going forward.
Our group arrived safely in Shanghai at about 10:30 AM local time, which is 12 hours' difference from US Eastern time. Our flight was delayed 16 hours due to a mechanical problem, which we are certainly grateful that they discovered on the ground instead of at 33,000 feet. They put us up at various motels near the airport and gave us $50 spending vouchers each, so no complaints from me.
I can't speak for Joanie, but our flight over was very interesting for several reasons:
Airlines usually take a "great circle" route on long-distance flights. If you picked up a piece of string to make a straight line on a globe between two cities on different continents, chances are that line would look very different than a straight line you would draw on a flat map. But the string line using the globe would be the shorter route, and often (for flights in the Northern hemisphere) the route will take the plane much further north than one would normally think necessary. Our flight from Detroit to Shanghai took us to within less than one degree of the North Pole (89 degrees, 6 minutes north latitude to be exact, according to the flight tracker). By my rough calculations this meant we were only about sixty miles from the Pole. When we reached that point Joanie yelled out the window, "HEY SANTA! WHY DIDN'T I GET THAT BIKE I WANTED WHEN I WAS NINE YEARS OLD, YOU &%$#&*@#! No doubt Mrs. Claus' ears turned red from the invective. So much for the Delicate Southern Flower award. Unfortunately there was too much cloud cover to see anything, which seemed to be the case for just about the entire flight. Was all of the Northern Hemisphere cloudy today?
Another source of amusement on the flight was watching the flight tracker map as our plane crossed into Russian airspace, traveling south from the Arctic Ocean and crossing the north Siberian coast. Watching it on the map (with the little airplane icon) kind of reminded me of the scene in "Dr. Strangelove" when the "big board" in the War Room shows the B-52s in General Ripper's bomb wing approaching their targets in the Soviet Union. "General Turgidson, how soon did you say the planes would penetrate Russian radar cover?" "About, uh, eighteen minutes from now, sir..."
I also got a kick out of the fact that we flew directly over Lake Baikal, in eastern Siberia not far from Mongolia, and that I was able to catch a brief glimpse of it. Lake Baikal holds several records-it is the oldest (25 million years), deepest (over 5,000 feet deep at it deepest point), and largest lake in the world in terms of volume. One or two of the Great Lakes may cover a larger surface area but no freshwater lake holds more water. Lake Baikal has 20% of the world's unfrozen fresh water.
The North Pole and Lake Baikal in one day-not a bad haul.
Anyway, things have gone pretty smoothly since we arrived. It was surprisingly easy to go through Chinese immigration/customs, our guide and bus were waiting for us, and we had no trouble getting to downtown Shanghai. We had a family-style lunch (served with both forks and chopsticks-I think all of us opted for the chopsticks) that was, to me, somewhat similar to what you might get at a Chinese restaurant in the US-rice with egg, egg drop soup, sweet and sour chicken, beef and peppers, bok choy, etc. The amount of food was quite a lot considering that it was lunch. The one item at lunch that I don't think most of us have seen before was a fish complete with head and tail (although the head was cut off and placed on the serving plate separately). I didn't try it (I don't like my food staring back at me), but it looked like a sweet and sour type dish. Joanie, ever the adventurous eater, tried part of the tail.
We then attended a tea tasting that everyone seemed to enjoy, including me, although I am not much of a tea drinker. After that we checked into our hotel. I opted to stay at the hotel and sleep, but Joanie joined the rest of the crowd for a visit to the Botanical Garden, followed by dinner (which Joanie reports was similar to lunch) and a circus-type acrobat show. Up at 6 AM Friday for some new adventures, for which your humble correspondent will turn over the keyboard to Joanie to report.
Our group arrived safely in Shanghai at about 10:30 AM local time, which is 12 hours' difference from US Eastern time. Our flight was delayed 16 hours due to a mechanical problem, which we are certainly grateful that they discovered on the ground instead of at 33,000 feet. They put us up at various motels near the airport and gave us $50 spending vouchers each, so no complaints from me.
I can't speak for Joanie, but our flight over was very interesting for several reasons:
Airlines usually take a "great circle" route on long-distance flights. If you picked up a piece of string to make a straight line on a globe between two cities on different continents, chances are that line would look very different than a straight line you would draw on a flat map. But the string line using the globe would be the shorter route, and often (for flights in the Northern hemisphere) the route will take the plane much further north than one would normally think necessary. Our flight from Detroit to Shanghai took us to within less than one degree of the North Pole (89 degrees, 6 minutes north latitude to be exact, according to the flight tracker). By my rough calculations this meant we were only about sixty miles from the Pole. When we reached that point Joanie yelled out the window, "HEY SANTA! WHY DIDN'T I GET THAT BIKE I WANTED WHEN I WAS NINE YEARS OLD, YOU &%$#&*@#! No doubt Mrs. Claus' ears turned red from the invective. So much for the Delicate Southern Flower award. Unfortunately there was too much cloud cover to see anything, which seemed to be the case for just about the entire flight. Was all of the Northern Hemisphere cloudy today?
Another source of amusement on the flight was watching the flight tracker map as our plane crossed into Russian airspace, traveling south from the Arctic Ocean and crossing the north Siberian coast. Watching it on the map (with the little airplane icon) kind of reminded me of the scene in "Dr. Strangelove" when the "big board" in the War Room shows the B-52s in General Ripper's bomb wing approaching their targets in the Soviet Union. "General Turgidson, how soon did you say the planes would penetrate Russian radar cover?" "About, uh, eighteen minutes from now, sir..."
I also got a kick out of the fact that we flew directly over Lake Baikal, in eastern Siberia not far from Mongolia, and that I was able to catch a brief glimpse of it. Lake Baikal holds several records-it is the oldest (25 million years), deepest (over 5,000 feet deep at it deepest point), and largest lake in the world in terms of volume. One or two of the Great Lakes may cover a larger surface area but no freshwater lake holds more water. Lake Baikal has 20% of the world's unfrozen fresh water.
The North Pole and Lake Baikal in one day-not a bad haul.
Anyway, things have gone pretty smoothly since we arrived. It was surprisingly easy to go through Chinese immigration/customs, our guide and bus were waiting for us, and we had no trouble getting to downtown Shanghai. We had a family-style lunch (served with both forks and chopsticks-I think all of us opted for the chopsticks) that was, to me, somewhat similar to what you might get at a Chinese restaurant in the US-rice with egg, egg drop soup, sweet and sour chicken, beef and peppers, bok choy, etc. The amount of food was quite a lot considering that it was lunch. The one item at lunch that I don't think most of us have seen before was a fish complete with head and tail (although the head was cut off and placed on the serving plate separately). I didn't try it (I don't like my food staring back at me), but it looked like a sweet and sour type dish. Joanie, ever the adventurous eater, tried part of the tail.
We then attended a tea tasting that everyone seemed to enjoy, including me, although I am not much of a tea drinker. After that we checked into our hotel. I opted to stay at the hotel and sleep, but Joanie joined the rest of the crowd for a visit to the Botanical Garden, followed by dinner (which Joanie reports was similar to lunch) and a circus-type acrobat show. Up at 6 AM Friday for some new adventures, for which your humble correspondent will turn over the keyboard to Joanie to report.
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