2/9  This was our roughest night at sea so far, 40 knot head wind and the swell was over 20 feet.  Around midnight it was really rough and we thought we would bounce out of bed!  The sliding door to our balcony came open and the wind sucked the sheer drape outside.  Noel made it across the room by hanging on to the furniture to close the door, Tom never woke up!  It finally calmed down about 4 am.

2/10 and 2/11 Shanghai, China, We arrived at our dock on the Huang Po river at about 6:30 am.  It was very cold, somewhere around 36 degrees F.  We had an afternoon tour so were able to relax around the ship in the morning.  The first part of the tour was to the Shanghai Museum where they have a vast collection of ancient pottery and ceramics, jade, furniture, art, calligraphy and more.  It is a nicely designed modern building and the displays were well done with descriptions in both Chinese and English.  Our next stop was the Yuan Garden in the middle of "Old China Town".  The garden is hundreds of years old and has beautiful buildings as well as decorative plants, trees and limestone rock formations.  Since it is the middle of winter none of the plants were in bloom but were showing buds.  We visited a silk shop and figured out how to use an ATM.  Getting Chinese Yuan from a bank account in Las Vegas in 10 seconds amazes us.  There were evening tours offered but since we had done them on a previous visit we stayed on board and had dinner. We were seated by the window on the river side so we could watch the dinner cruise boats sail by.  Many of the boats had elaborate decor and bright lights including large advertising signs.

On the morning of the 11th we took an early (7:45 am) tour to Zhujiajiao, a water village.  The Chinese refer to it as "like Venice, Italy" (that is really a stretch).  We had a good tour guide and she took us for a walk through the narrow winding streets where we visited  an old post office and a Chinese pharmacy.  We had about a half hour of free time and then boarded a boat for the trip on the canal back to the entrance where our bus was waiting. It was an enjoyable day other than the horrible traffic we encountered on our way back to our ship. Our bus driver was very aggressive and changed lanes continually causing a lot of cars to honk and slam on their brakes.  We won, the bus is bigger!

Shanghai continues to grow by leaps and bounds.  There are many new sky scrapers and huge new apartment blocks since our visit in 2008.  Many of these buildings are very modern designs and it looks like each one tries to out do all the others.  Old housing areas are just being torn down and the residents are relocated far out of the city.  Shanghai has about 24 million residents, double the number of when Tom visited here 20 years ago.  The air quality was fair while we were in Shanghai, but certainly better than when we visited in 2008 when we could not see across the river.

We will not have access to email or phone calls while in Japan, something to do with the ships system not being compatible with the system in Japan.  So will probably not be able to post anything for a few days.

The view across the river from the ship

The Shanghai History Museum

The McDonalds in "Old China Town" seemed very popular

One of the buildings in the Yuan Garden

One of the more elaborate dinner cruise boats

Buildings in water village are combo of homes and businesses

Inside the very old Chinese pharmacy

Our boatman

It was cold enough to wear the down coats!

One of the more bizarre buildings with these weird "pod" things hanging in the middle