Is Traveling Stressful? En Route to China.

China, Shanghai, Friday 4 June 2010

On arrival at Sydney airport to catch our plane to Shanghai, China, our taxi driver couldn’t get the boot open to get our luggage out.  We were already running a little late and this hold-up didn’t do anything to calm the nerves or alleviate the high blood pressure.  After 10 minutes of bashing on the boot Paul actually took down the rear seat of the taxi whereby he had access to the boot from the inside and kicked the dickens out of the boot lid with his feet.  Finally, freedom for the luggage … phew.  Well, as Murphy’s Law would have it, on check in we were informed that our plane was running 6 hours late.  So …. Instead of leaving at 10.05am and running extremely late we were now 6 hours early.  It would be 4.00pm before we left the tarmac.  In actual fact it was more like 5.00pm.

 

Traveling with China Air I was looking forward to the time when, on the plane, shoes off,  perhaps with a comforting drink in hand and settled in to watch a movie, I could finally relax.   All well and good if you can speak Chinese.  The movies were sub-titled of course, but those Chinese movies are so fast and furious it was hard work to keep up.   

 

Arrival in Shanghai was at 1.05am  5 June, China time.  We were fortunate to have Bruce there to pick us up and drive us the hour or so to our 4* hotel.  Very nice contemporary hotel – The Holiday Inn Vista Shanghai – 10 minutes from the city centre.  Great comfortable bed(s) – 2 doubles in fact.  We can have one each if we want.  Got to climb into one of them at 3.00am to be woken by an early wake-up call at 7.00am.  Travelling is such fun, isn’t it?

View from our hotel room Shanghai

Our Panda friend there to greet us in our hotel room.

World Expo Shanghai 2010