We are now in the Middle East with Muscat, Oman being our first stop.  This is where we had our Distinctive Voyage excursion and we were the host of a group of 28 people.  Our tour guide took us to a small museum which allowed us to get a good perspective of the history of Oman.  It is amazing how much fighting the people did to get where they are today.  We were told by our guide that Oman is one of the most peaceful countries in the world now.  Even though they have the exact same religions that are found in Iraq where fighting is a way of life, the people live peacefully and happily in Oman.  One of the main reasons for this is the Sultan that rules Oman is a benevolent dictator who is very progressive in his thinking to make Oman a modernized country.  He actively promotes tourism as a way to bring money into the country knowing that their oil supply will only last so much longer. We were told that Muscat is the second cleanest city in the world (Singapore is number one).  Our tour also took us by the Royal Palace and the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque which was very impressive. The mosque is extremely large and can accommodate 20,000 people praying inside!  The day we were there was Friday which is their religious day and we were not allowed in the mosque.  Although we didn’t go into any forts, it is amazing to see all the forts scattered around the mountains.  Many of these forts are just large towers on various mountain peaks that provide a look out point and a good place to mount cannons for the city’s protection.  We also were able to see the Mutrah market which is an extremely large and busy market place where they sell almost anything.  Throughout the market you can see the local people bargaining for various items that they want to buy.  

We came back to Muscat a second time on the next segment of our cruise, 4 days after our first visit.  We elected to just take a long walk down the corniche which is a beautifully tiled sidewalk that goes along the water’s edge.  The water was clear and the breeze was nice and cool (considering it was 90 outside).  It was a nice relaxful (6 miles) walk to the end and we got some nice pictures of the mountainous country all around this city.  We climbed up into one of the towers surrounding the city and found two old cannons aimed outward to protect the city.  We walked to the city gates and came back to the down town area.  We stopped on the way back at a restaurant (Fast Food Juice Centre) for one of the fruit drinks we saw everyone getting last time we were here.  It was refreshing and great after our walk! 

Our next stop was in Dubai which is in the United Arab Emirates.  This is country that is made up of several small kingdoms (emirates) that banded together.  Dubai as a city (also an emirate) is one of the most modern cities that you can imagine with so many exotic looking buildings and hotels.  The tallest building in the world is there, the Burj Khalifa, where you can go to the 148th floor observation deck to get an outstanding view of the city.  It has a set of fountains outside the building that is much more impressive than what you see at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.  Since we had visited this building and city on our last trip to Dubai, we elected to go out in the desert and see a different side of Dubai.  We went on an excursion that took us in 4x4’s out into the desert.  On our way out of the city we passed the camel market.  This market is where you can buy and sell camels.  Camels cost between $3,000 and $20,000.  They are also housed there in fenced areas.  There are supposed to be 1000 camels in this area!  They even have a small stadium where they do camel racing although no betting is allowed.  There are cash prizes though for the camels who win.  Once we got out into the desert we raced around the sand dunes with other 4x4’s seeing how much sand we could throw over our windshield as we made sharp turns and barreled over the sand dune peaks.  It was a fun time!  We were told that you have to have a special driver’s license to be able to drive out in the desert.  Our driver did a great job.  We then went to a quiet area where we watched the sun set over the desert.  Very beautiful!  After sunset we headed to a Bedouin camp to have dinner and ride a camel.  The camel ride was short but it is always fun to get on a camel and hold on when it either rises up or sits back down!  We have ridden on both a camel and an elephant during this cruise – what will be next?  The “Bedouin” meal was very good allowing us to try some good Middle Eastern delicacies.  During the meal we were treated to a belly dancer who gave us a nice performance.  After this we wandered around to check out some of the shops and eventually headed back to our 4x4 for the ride back to Dubai.  It was nice driving back and seeing Dubai’s skyline lit up in the evening.  The Burj Kahlifa has a nice light show 3 times every hour.  We didn’t get back on to the ship until 10 PM and then went up to the upper deck to get a nice view of the city as our ship departed.

Our next stop was in Abu Dhabi.  We had never been to this city before and found it to be very interesting also.  We elected to just do this city on our own instead of getting an excursion.  We took a taxi to the Sheikh Zayed Mosque which is the 3rd largest mosque in the world (after the ones in Mecca and Madina in Saudi Arabia).  It is a beautiful mosque and was designed with the Taj Mahal in mind.  We viewed this mosque from all angles and you really had to be standing a long way away from the mosque to be able to get it all in your picture.  We had not dressed appropriately to go into the mosque and had dressed comfortably as we planned to just make this a day of picture taking and exploring.  We then took a taxi over to the Intercontinental Hotel to use a starting point to do some walking in this city.  Like Dubai this is a city of amazing buildings.  Some are symmetrical towers like the 5 buildings that make up the Etihad Towers.  Other buildings have huge cut outs in them while others have bridges between the towers.  Some are built crooked or twisted while others are built with an intentional lean.  If you wanted to be an architect, this would be one of the two cities where you would want to work (Dubai being the other city).  Imagine your boss saying build me a huge, uniquely styled building and budget is not object.  This would be a dream world for an architect!  Across the street from the Etihad Towers is the Royal Palace.  It is a large building with a huge dome on top of it that looks like it is made of tiles and/or marble.  As we went up to an open gate to take a better picture we were stopped by a guard.  Since we were both wearing shorts we knew we were not dressed appropriately.  We were surprised to be told that Greg could not go any further but Sharon could.  We thought this was really strange considering on restrictive Arab countries are with the dress of women (knees and shoulders covered) but they seem to be even more concerned about men’s dress also (at least at the palace).  Near the palace was an oil rig that we assume was to remind the city of where it got its wealth.  It gave Greg some old memories when he worked on these oil rigs 40 years ago in the Middle East.  As we walked to the Marina Mall we stumbled across a new landmark called the Founders Memorial.  We read sign stating that it just opened in 2018 and was amazed that we were the only people there.  After we took a few pictures of this very unique memorial, we started to head out when we were stopped.  As it turned out we were interviewed because they had just opened up the memorial and we were one of the first (if not the first) tourists to visit the memorial.  They took a couple dozen pictures of us and did a brief interview of both of us.  Maybe we will be on the next promotional Abu Dhabi video!  We gave them our contact information in case they put us in any of their promotional literature.  Pretty neat!  We eventually made it to the Marina Mall which was a beautiful mall with hundreds of stores and restaurants.  We stopped at one of the restaurants for a little lunch and something to drink.  We ended up drinking one liter of water each!  It is amazing how dehydrated you can get walking around in 105 degree temperature.  Even though it is that hot and there isn’t a cloud in the sky the weather doesn’t feel that warm because there is a nice sea breeze that is constantly cooling you off.  From the mall you got another good view of the Royal Palace and the President’s House behind it.  Also next to the mall is a hotel that looks just like Atlantis Paradise Resort in the Bahamas called the Fairmount Marina Residence.  From the mall we walked over to a place called Heritage Village.  This was somewhat like a museum where you could see various homes (tents) that the desert people (Bedouins) lived in and the boats they built.  It also contained many shops that you could purchase the local clothes, scarfs or other items.  Since time was getting to be a factor we took a taxi with the last of our local money to the beach side which is called the Corniche Beach. There weren’t many people out on the beach but there were a few.  Some areas of the beach were fenced off and were private or you had to at least pay a fee to use that area of the beach.  We walked from there to the heart of the World Trade Center where there was a shuttle to take us back to our ship. 

We are now on our third cruise heading towards the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean.

​Sharon & Greg

We arrived in Cochin, India on April 14th.  Since we had a bike tour set up for later in the afternoon we decided to take a Tuk Tuk tour in the morning.  For those of you that don’t know what a Tuk Tuk is, it is a three wheel vehicle that carries 2 to 4 passengers and the driver.  The driver is basically driving a motorcycle with two rear wheels and a passenger compartment.  These vehicles race in and out of traffic as much as possible to ensure they get to where they are going as fast as possible.  Our driver started off by taking us to an Indian woman on the side of the street that made us a very nice “welcoming” necklace of jasmine and carnation flowers that smelled.  We kept the necklaces in our cabin after this tour to enjoy the fresh fragrance it provided for the next few days.  Cochin is your typical Indian city with cows wondering around in the streets.  We made a stop by a neighborhood Indian laundromat where clothes are washed in a big concrete basin and then thrown against stones or concrete slabs to “wash” the clothes (or scare the dirt out of them!). After washing they are hand wrung out and hung on the clothes lines.  Instead of using clothes pins, the clothes line has two strings twisted together which allow them to slide the clothes between the two strings which hold them in place while drying.  After drying, some of the clothes are taken to be ironed by some very unusual irons.  Some are electric (and look like they were built when electricity was invented) and others are heated by putting hot charcoal in the iron.  We took a ride by a local fish market where they had some Chinese fishing nets.  These are huge fishing nets that extend out into the water on poles and are lifted up and down by counter weights of stones.  We tried lifting the nets up by pulling the stones down.  These nets we were working typically require six men to operate while fishing.  Sharon bought a bead bracelet for $1 from a little Indian orphan girl who came by.  We visited a spice market that had both spices for cooking and herbal remedies.  One of the roads we went down had a local market where we stopped and watched them load and unload huge bags of rice, peppers and other products.  We walked down an alleyway in the marketplace to see where some of the people lived.  They were very small “homes” with just a small room or two.  Clothes were out hanging everywhere and kids were playing.  All the children were happy and ran out to have a photo taken of them.
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In the afternoon of Cochin we did our bike rides in the backwater area.  We were picked up in a Tuk Tuk at the port and taken out of the city 10 to 15 miles to the backwater country where fortunately the traffic was a little less.  Most of our biking was done going down small paths between the various fishing areas.  People owned these fishing areas and actually had little lookout stands on stilts over top the water to ensure no one fished in their areas.  We saw several people fishing along the way.  Some just waded out into the water with a net and caught their meal for the day.  We then stopped at a shop where they built wooden canoes.  These were very large canoes and they used bread fruit trees for the lumber.  They heated the wood to curve it along the length of the canoe.  Coconut husks were sown into the canoes to create a seal for the wood plank joints.  After seeing these canoes being built we were given a ride in a canoe.  The canoe was plenty big enough to fit five people and our four bikes.  We floated down one of the canals and saw all the Chinese fishing nets used by many of the homes along the canal.  These nets were smaller than what we had previously seen and we were told that they could be operated by just one person.  The homes were very small and many had roofs that required plastic tarps to keep out the rain.  Some of the walls of the homes were under repair.  It appeared that each home was a work in progress where they made repairs or additions as they got enough money to do the work.  Even though some of the roofs were almost missing, almost every home had a TV antenna!  We were later told that TV service was very cheap in India as was electricity.  As we rode our bikes done the paths it was amazing how many of the Indian children would stop to say hi and “what is your name”.  English is actually the official language of India although many people do not speak it.  They are now teaching it in school and that was why the children all wanted to practice using it.  We were obviously easily determined to be non-Indians as we rode our bikes if for no other reason than we were the only bikers with helmets on!  Towards the end of our bike ride we came across a beach on the ocean which was very nice.  It was a nice bike ride and a nice way to see some different parts of Cochin.

Goa was our second stop in India.  Like Cochin we had been to Goa once before, five years ago.  There was nothing we really wanted to do or see in Goa so we decided to make it a beach day.  India supposedly has some very nice beaches.  We took a taxi and went to one of the local beaches not too far from the cruise port.  We were surprised to only see taxis at the port and no Tuk Tuks like we saw in Cochin.  When we were here five years ago we saw mostly Tuk Tuks but they don’t seem to be very popular here anymore in Goa. It is also interesting that your taxi ride in Goa is round trip with the taxi driver waiting for you while you stay at the beach.  The beach was nice and we were able to get a few chairs and an umbrella.  The chairs were a little different in that they were wooden chaise chairs and weighed a ton.  The time at the beach was enjoyable with a nice breeze and pretty blue skies.  Boats could be seen out in the distance.  The beach had several local Indian restaurants to grab a snack or a beer but since we were going to a specialty restaurant that night on the cruise ship we decided not spoil our appetites.  We spent several hours at the beach before heading back to the ship.  We had a pleasant and relaxing day in Goa.

Our third a final stop in India was in Mumbai.  Sharon was very excited to make this stop because she wanted to visit the Dharavi Slum where Slum Dog Millionaire was filmed.  In order to view the slums we had arranged a tour with a company called Tours by Locals.  This is a company that allows you to search local tour guides for specific tours they offer in various cities.  They charge a single fee for the tour and offer it to a specified number of people.  We did this tour with just the two of us but we could have brought along another couple for the same price.  It is a worthwhile tour company to consider if you like relatively private tours for a reasonable amount of money.  Our guide was Shailesh who actually lived in the slums and turned out to be a great guide for the day.  Since this was a private tour for us we were able to customize it to see what we wanted to see and we spent the majority of our time visiting the slum area.  Mumbai is a city of more than 20 million people with more than 60% of them living in the slums.  The particular slums we went to (where the movie had been filmed) is the third largest slum in the world (Brazil #1 and Pakistan #2) and covers a one square mile area.  We weren’t allowed to take too many pictures in the slums but did take some from some overviews and at some specific areas.  The slums were amazing!  We had no idea that so much work was done there.  While the people lived over head in buildings made of corrugated metal or plywood, the bottom portion of the building was used as a small business.  The three primary businesses performed there were plastic recycling, leather production and clay pottery manufacture.  The government sponsored these programs and it allowed the people to have very labor intensive jobs but make enough money to eat and keep a roof over their heads.  There were bags and bags of plastic that were brought in and out of the slums for the plastics to be sorted by type, color and purity.  After this work was done it was re-bagged and sent to manufacturing plants outside of Mumbai that made this recycled plastic into finished product.  Corrugated boxes were recycled by cutting open the boxes and reprinting new information on the opposite side of the carton before reassembling them.  Everything was recycled and reused!  The hides from animals were brought into the slums were it was processed and made into finished leather products.  We bought a few items as souvenirs.  Another different area of the slums was dedicated to clay pottery making.  They produced a great quantity of pots and sold them to stores for sale to people.  As we walked along the streets of the slums, people hustled around and most everyone seemed happy.  Many children wanted us to take their pictures.  We were told about the making of the movie and in one alley where they filmed they decided to film a daylight scene at midnight so they had full use of the alley way.  They had to use a great deal of power to light up the entire area to make it look bright enough for a daylight scene.  We were told that no people in the slums received anything for the filming of the movie in their area.  It was also interesting to find out that the film upon its completion could not be shown in India because the government thought that it showed a degrading look of the Indian people (i.e., beggars and crime, which neither did they have).  Years later after the movie continued to gain popularity throughout the world, that ban was lifted.  It was a very interesting morning viewing the slums and learning about it and the people there.

After our slum tour we asked our guide to take us to a good Indian restaurant in the area for lunch.  He had just the place and we were treated to his favorite local Indian restaurant.  While Greg had his beer, Sharon had some Indian rum with Pepsi (she actually had several of them!).  The meal was great as we had an appetizer – a chopped pickle mixed in oil and Indian spices; rice; curry; vegetables and chicken with some of that great Indian flat bread.  We thoroughly enjoyed the lunch and some more time to chat with our guide about the Indian lifestyle.  The lunch was extremely inexpensive and we provided a large tip to show our thanks to the manager who was a good friend of our guide and took great care of us!

After lunch we visited another Indian laundry but this one was even more amazing.  It is in the Guinness World Record as the largest outdoor laundry facility.  Although the clothes were cleaned in the same manner as we had seen in Cochin, this laundry was so much larger in size and the people lived right where they did the laundry.  We then went off and did some more touristic sightseeing. We saw the Gateway of India which is a large archway at the pier built in honor of King George V. Right next door is the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel which was built to replicate the Taj Mahal.  One of the most beautiful buildings in the city was the Victoria Train Station where 90% of Mumbai’s population goes through every day!  We visited the Hanging Garden which had a nice overlook of the city and the beach.  We went by to visit the house that Gandhiji lived in for 17 years (1917-1934).  It was more of a museum dedicated to his life.  After that, we headed back to our ship and amazed at how much we had seen that day.  We had a very fun and full day in Mumbai!  Thanks Shailesh for sharing your city and home with us!

We are now heading across the Arabian Sea on our way to Muscat, Oman!

​Sharon & Greg

Our flight from Shanghai to Singapore was uneventful.  We arrived at our Swissotel hotel and we were extremely impressed.  Once again we had a great view of the city.  We could see the financial district with all of the tall buildings in Singapore and we had a view of Gardens by the Bay behind the beautiful Marina Bay Sands Hotel.  Although it was 10 PM we decided to take a quick walk around the hotel.  Most places had closed down for the night but we got a chance to get a little exercise and see what was around us.  We also got to feel the temperature which was almost 90 degrees at night.  What a change from coming from Shanghai where the temperatures were in the 40s when we left.

The next morning we played pickleball!  Sharon had made some arrangements with Janet Lye from Singapore who picked us up from our hotel and took us over to a community center where they played pickleball.  Across the street was a market where we first had a little coffee/treats and was shown what they like to eat for breakfast in Singapore.  The pickleball play was indoors but NOT air conditioned.  They had a huge fan on the ceiling that was at least 16 feet in diameter which provided some air movement.  They had two courts set up.  The nets were a little flimsy but the lines were actually tiled into the floor.  The floors were hard tile and they played with an outdoor ball.  They hit the ball hard and it was very different to play on these courts but very fun.  We met some new friends and played pickleball for a few hours.  Janet and her husband, David, took us to lunch (rice and chicken and yummy desserts) and then back to the hotel.  It wasn’t until after she picked us up we found out her daughter was getting married the next day!  She spent all this time with us and had to go decorate the hotel and last minute preparations for the wedding on the next day.  We felt really bad but had a great time playing and meeting them.  Thanks so much Janet and David for the hospitality, meeting your club and playing pickleball.

After we got back to the hotel and changed, we went out to explore Singapore.  We had been there several times previously, most recently 5 years ago after a cruise.  We walked around looking at some of the hotels and checking out the Merlion which overlooks the harbor.  We stopped in one of the shopping malls and had a refreshing smoothie before going over to Gardens by the Bay.  This is a very unique area where the city has created over two dozen artificial trees (called Supertrees) that reach up to 90 feet in height.  These trees are actually made up of mesh of structural steel that has literally 100’s of different species of plants stuffed all the way up the trunks of these trees.  The trees are totally self-sufficient and collect water when it rains that gets pumped to the plants via pumps operated by solar power.  They really are quite fascinating and we had first seen them on our last trip to Singapore.  We didn’t get an opportunity on our last trip to go into the two glass enclosed structures called the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest.  The Flower Dome was a large greenhouse with 1000’s of different species of plants.  It was extremely well put together and maintained.  Throughout the plants there were various carved or shaped figures that were very interesting.  We happened to be there while they were having their Japanese garden event where you could see some beautiful Cherry Blossom Trees and other Japanese plants.  It was amazing how many people came to take pictures of themselves with some of these beautiful flowers.  The Cloud Forest was also a huge greenhouse with many different plants and it included a 100 foot mountain with a waterfall on display.  You took an elevator to the top and took a casual walk down enjoying the views and the plants as you got down to the bottom.  After visiting these two greenhouses we went over to the Supertree Grove and bought some tickets to walk on the Skyway that is 70 feet above ground and connects several of these Supertrees.  You get some great views of the city from there.  After going down from the Skyway we waited for the daily light show that happens twice each evening.  We had never seen it before and it was very impressive.  Many Disney songs were played while some of the huge Supertrees danced in flashing and strobing lights.  We then took a night stroll through other areas of the gardens seeing some of the unique sculptures like 100 foot baby and the 15 foot dragonflies.  We walked through the Marina Bay Sands Hotel and admired its opulence.   After that we took a leisurely stroll around the harbor admiring the views and night until we got back to our hotel.

The next day we headed out for the cruise port and our home for the next month and a half – the Celebrity Constellation.  We got situated on this ship and headed off for Phuket, Thailand our first port of call.  We had originally planned a boat trip to Phuket but decided to cancel that and try out the beaches there.  There was a beach just off where the tender dropped us of and we spent the day enjoying the sand, sun and water.  It was a beautiful island off the coast of Thailand.  Towards the end of the afternoon we took a walk and Sharon found a place to get a mani and pedi.  While she was busy, Greg tried out one of the Thai massages where they walked all over his back and beat him to a pulp.  After our fun day in Phuket we headed back to the ship on the tender.

Our next stop was Colombo, Sri Lanka.  We had found a private tour company that would take us to the Elephant Orphanage for one third what the ship was charging.  We weren’t sure how it would work out but it was great and we would highly recommend Gemini Travels if you ever need a tour in Sri Lanka.  Our driver met us at the port entrance and we had a nice air conditioned car and a personal driver who spoke English (highly accented English but we could communicate OK).  While we were driving to the Elephant Orphanage, if we wanted to stop for pictures, he would pull over the car.  It is very nice when it is just you and your guide.   Before going to the orphanage we stopped at a Tea Factory and learned how tea was made.  It was very educational to see how it was dried, fermented, sorted and packed.  They even had a 120 year old machine from Belfast, Ireland that they still used to make their tea.  We sampled some tea and we bought a little tea before we left.  We also stopped at a Gem store and learned about how gems were mined in Sri Lanka.  It is a very manual process where they had dig very small mine shafts with just two people working at a time.  

We then went to the Elephant Orphanage and were impressed to see all the elephants running loose.  You could get pretty close to them and take some good pictures.  We had lunch there while overlooking the elephants in the river.  It was great Indian food with a little wine and beer.  When we left the orphanage, our driver asked us if we wanted to ride or bath the elephants.  We said why not and he took us to another nearby place that had about 12 elephants.  There we took an elephant ride while our guide took pictures.  We then went to a stream where there was an elephant that we were able to scrub it down with a coconut shell.  They then asked if we wanted to have the elephant spray water on us.  Sharon said sure while Greg got out.  Sharon said just one little squirt while the elephant doused her with three long squirts of water from his trunk.  It was really a great time and this little side adventure only cost us $14.  

After Sharon’s bath we went to a “Spice Market” which really turned out to be a spice garden where they primarily grew the spice as herbal remedies for many things.  We were told how various oils removed hair while others promoted hair growth.  They had herbs to stop snoring, lower your cholesterol, promote weight loss, control diabetes, eliminate headaches/allergies, etc.  You name it and they had an herb to fix it.  Sharon bought several herbal remedies and we will see how well they do.  

That was the end of our tour except for getting back to our ship which was quite exciting with all the traffic that had built up because of the torrential rain that began just after we arrived at the spice garden.  Much of the traffic might also have been caused by Sri Lanka’s New Year’s which was to occur the day after we left.  Driving in Sri Lanka is like driving in India – unpredictable and dangerous.  At least it appears dangerous to us watching vehicles come down the road in no particular lane, moving from side to side to avoid other vehicles.  The drivers seem to know what each other is doing but it is quite a sight watching motorcycles and tuk tuks be pushed out of the way by car, truck and buses.  Everyone honks away as they are flying down the road passing vehicles slower than them.  We made it back safe and sound!

Our next three stops will be in India where we hopefully will have some more good food to eat!

​Sharon & Greg

Our arrival in Shanghai was delayed by heavy fog.  This was our departure port and fortunately the ship was able to arrive later in the day and get all the passengers off in order to welcome the next group of passengers on board.  They certainly had a busy day trying to make that happen.  It is amazing how the China smog causes so much fog and poor visibility.  We took a half day tour from the ship with hotel drop off included since the port was a good distance away from the city.  Part of the tour took us to the Bund which is a beautiful walkway on the old side of the city where you get a great view of the amazing Shanghai skyline.  The tour also stopped at the Oriental Pearl Tower which is an iconic shape on the city horizon and also serves as a radio and TV tower.  The highlight of the tour though was a ride up the Jin Mao Building to the observation deck on the 88th floor.  It was a clear night and you could see the entire city.  Right next door was the Shanghai Tower which is by far the largest building in Shanghai (over 2073 feet tall) and the second tallest in the world.  We will see the tallest building in the world (Burj Khalifa at 2717 feet) when we visit Dubai on our next cruise.  We found it really interesting that we were standing on an observation deck on the 88th floor of a building right next door and could not even see the top of the Shanghai Tower because it was so much taller than where we were standing (127 floors – 39 floors above us)!  Another fascinating thing about the Shanghai Tower is the outside of the building is a “shell” that is totally made of glass panels and is attached to the structural center of the building.  This allows the shell to be shaped in a twisted manner and the building looks a little like a pretzel from the outside and does not have straight sides.  It is quite a unique design.  There was also the Shanghai World Financial Center on the other side of where we were standing which is “only” 1614 feet tall (101 floors) but is considered to be the tallest building in the world with a cut out (at the very top of the building there is a huge square cut out in the building).  It was interesting to learn that all three of these buildings were designed together as part of the overall city redesign of the Pudong side of Shanghai.  The Jin Mao building was completed first in 1999 and the Shanghai tower last in 2015.  It is also fascinating to know that Shanghai has 20 buildings that are over 750 feet tall which is one of the reasons its skyline looks so spectacular.  When we arrived at our hotel later that night we were pleased to get a room which overlooked the Bund and the skyline.  It was a little odd though that the picture window was in the bathroom over the sunken tub!
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The next day was another gorgeous day with very clear skies and a temperature just over 80 degrees.  We first walked down the Bund once again in the daylight admiring the skyline and taking lots of pictures.  We then walked to the Yu Yuan Market which was near Yu Yuan Garden.  Along the way we happened upon Old Shanghai Road which is a unique road with Chinese shops where not much English was understood and haggling was not part of the buying process like it is in so many tourist shopping areas in Asia.  We were able to take a lot of pictures of some typical Chinese life and culture.  As we completed our walk on Old Shanghai Road it came right to Yu Yuan Marketplace which was a very unique set of shops geared to tourists but still very fascinating.  We did stop and have a few Chinese dumplings because we saw a long line of people ordering them.  While we were eating our dumplings in this very small Chinese restaurant, two of our friends from the cruise just happened to come inside.  We had said goodbye on the ship because they were staying at a different hotel and for only one day.  We didn’t expect to run into them in a city of more than 25 million people.  What was even funnier is later in the day while we were walking along the Bund with 10,000 other people, we ran into this same couple a second time.  How strange is that!

We didn’t visit the Yu Yuan Gardens because we were told the flowers were not yet in bloom yet.  We did walk across the bridge to the garden which has a very old teahouse in the center of a very large pond.  It was a very picturesque area and the pond was loaded with Koi.  We also did some shopping on the other side of the Garden where a person had told us was where all the locals shopped.  This was a large four story building that contained hundreds of small shops.  Many of the shops sold exactly the same things and the place certainly was not very busy when we were there.  We bought a couple of items but really just looked around. 

After going back to the hotel to freshen up we went back out to see the city at night.  When the city starts getting dark the city’s many buildings start lighting up and you can see a unique light show.  There are no lasers flashing around like Hong Kong but you can see many lights flashing on the top and sides of the buildings.  Many of the buildings look like giant TV screens where you can watch commercials or short videos.  Some scroll words or letters up or around.  Other buildings have fireworks going off in lights on the side of their building.  The Oriental Pearl Tower changes colors throughout the evening and has flashing lights going up and down.  The huge Shanghai Tower has Chinese characters that rotate around and up to the top of the building along with messages that rotate around its top.  In addition to the buildings there are ships that are lit up going up and down the river adding to the light show.  These boats provide a river cruise tour for 50 minutes.  We took a cruise on the third night and found the ride very enjoyable.  It is really quite a sight and at least 10,000 people every night stroll along the Bund walkaway to view this amazing view.

On the second night we took the passenger tunnel underneath the river to the Pudong side to see the Oriental Pearl Tower a little closer.  We had thought the passenger tunnel was a walking tunnel but it turned out to be a little ride where you got in a little “car” just like an attraction at Disney World.  The car took you through the tunnel which was colorfully lit up to enhance the experience.  When we did get to the Pearl Tower we took some pictures and made our way over to the Disney Store to look for some souvenirs of Disney products from Shanghai but there really wasn’t much that was unique to Shanghai.  Outside the Disney store was a very unique clock that had Disney characters going around and Disney songs being song at certain times.  We also made our way over to a large shopping center next to the Pearl Tower.  It is amazing on how many name brand stores they have and how many large shopping malls they have.  We spent most of our time in the bottom floor of the mall looking at the various food stalls selling strange foods that didn’t really look too appealing to us.  We did sample a little fried bread with vegetables in it and a smoothie.  After this we walked back to the passenger tunnel to take us back to the Bund side of the river.
We found a restaurant not far from our hotel called Lost Heaven that we ate at the first night because it was about the only thing open at 10 PM besides the hotel restaurants.  We ended up eating there three nights and really enjoyed the food.  We had their vegetable noodles, spring rolls and a couple of different Chinese chicken menu items.  Everything we ate there was delicious!  This was a huge restaurant and it was packed every night we were there.

On our second day we spent doing a little shopping back at the Old Shanghai Road stores.  We bought a few souvenir gifts.  We picked up a few Disney lollipops for our granddaughters at one of the Yu Yuan Market stores we had seen the first day.  Disney items are sold everywhere you look but you have to be careful that it is really a Disney product.  They also sell a Diversity product that has a logo that looks like Disney and is packaged the same way.  Some of the characters don’t quite look the same though.  The prices are a lot less expensive for these copy brands.
We spend much of the second and third days walking to different areas of the city.  We went to most of the markets that tourists go to in Shanghai but most were not that impressive.  We spent more time walking through the residential areas seeing how people lived.  Little things fascinated us like the little containers with water outside the small restaurants where they did their dishes.  It is always amazing to see how the laundry is hung out the windows for the entire world to see.  Small little “golf carts” were used to pressure wash the sidewalks and bike areas.  You constantly saw bikes or mopeds with families of 3, 4 or even 5 people going down the road.  Bikes were used for hauling everything from trash to products for delivery and food deliveries.  No matter how far into the city we went, we always felt safe and never felt threatened.  People would look at us a little strange at times because they definitely could tell we were tourists but most people just smiled at us and asked where we were from.

The last day we were in Shanghai it was cold and the visibility was extremely poor.  Not a good day for photography.  You could only see one third up the Shanghai Tower before it disappeared into the fog.  We took the ferry over to the other side of the river.  Like Hong Kong this was a very old ferry and only cost us around $0.30 per person each way.  We walked along the promenade on the Pudong side of the river and this was a very nice area created as part of the new city plan.  It was also used as a bike trail and jogging area.  We then went walking into the city which is really the financial district.  Shanghai has one of the largest financial districts in the world and rivals New York City’s Wall Street in size and the number of large banks who have their corporate headquarters there.  We walked into a few of the shopping malls and browsed at a few stores.  We walked into the Shanghai Tower, the World Financial Center and the Jin Mao Tower.  It was a good walk and allowed us to see how expensive everything was on this side of the river.  When we came back to the other side on the ferry we went to Nanjing Road which is another huge shopping area and at night it looks like Times Square with all of the street signs lit up and people crowding the streets.  These shops were expensive and there were no bargains to be found on this road.  We did see several food stalls though that were doing a great business.
To give you an idea on how much we liked Shanghai, you can tell this by the quantity of pictures that we took here.  In the first two and a half weeks of our trip (including a 3 night stay in Hong Kong), we took 650 pictures.  In the 4 days we visited Shanghai we took 650 pictures in just this city and hardly took any on the last day because of the poor visibility.  This was by far our favorite city we have visited during this trip and look forward to coming back here again.

We also learned a little about Chinese culture during this trip.  Here is what we learned:

• Be very careful when you are at a tourist site with a Chinese group.  They will push and shove you out of the way without any thought that this is wrong.  Sharon had a man reach over her head and basically use her shoulders to rest his arms so that he could put his camera in front of her face to take his pictures.  In the Jin Mao Tower we were almost trampled by a Chinese group of tourists behind us.
• When Chinese people walk along the streets, they walk in a straight line and expect you to get out of the way.  They also have a cell phone in their hands and are looking down 90% of the time.  Everyone in China appears to have a cell phone.
• Don’t try to talk when there are two or more Chinese people having a conversation near you.  They YELL everything they say so that the other person can hear them.  It almost appears as if they are angry because they are yelling but they are just having a normal conversation.
• Don’t ever walk across the street just because the Green Pedestrian sign says you can.  It is guaranteed there will still be several bikes, mopeds or motorcycles still coming through and they certainly believe they have the right of way.  Cars will even be flying around a corner just to beat the traffic.  Although we never saw a pedestrian get hit, they certainly have no right of way in China.
• Interesting that we saw, that police will ticket you for jaywalking, we saw that quite a bit.  But, no tickets for driving at night with no headlights.

We provide these words of wisdom in case you travel here.  We have no prejudice the Chinese people and they were always most gracious to us at almost all times.  There are just some different personal behaviors they have in China that we had never noticed in the US before.
We left Shanghai to go to Singapore where we depart on the Celebrity Constellation for four back to back cruises that eventually takes us to Venice.

Sharon & Greg