Shanghai and home!

Well, I guess we were getting pretty tired from all our travels.  We also arrived in Shanghai with a bit of additional gastric distress and Kaydi began to develop a fever.  But our apartments/suites were rather swank (especially after our upgrade to the penthouse) and the rooms welcomed us in from the ongoing intense heat.  While I know that it's also been really hot in NJ, it's hard to describe just what it was like to try to sight-see and otherwise "bop" around as tourists when barely five minutes after showering, you'd be completely soaked through--and you'd only just walked 100 paces from the hotel.

So, we didn't see all that much of Shanghai.  Kaydi, Kimi and Julia got haircuts, we browsed a mall, we talked to locals over dumplings and noodles, and the girls and I wandered into a small amusement park while cruising around at the People's Square.  The city was teeming with both locals and visitors and the streets were extremely crowded.  It's hard to imagine packing an already densely populated urban jungle with so many additional foreign visitors--but that's China.  We had already decided NOT to venture to EXPO 2010, having heard repeated reports of 1 to 4 hour lines at the most popular pavilions (and no one we spoke to was giving the gathering such rave reviews anyway).

But Julia, Cathy, and Kimi got to visit the Aquarium while Kaydi and I went to the GuangCi Hospital (originally the Saint-Marie Hospital in the early 1900s).  Her fever seemed to have shot up during the night and while I wasn't all that concerned (and I did bring antibiotics), I knew we'd soon have 20 hours of travel ahead of us and I didn't want to take chances...some of you will remember that within 72 hours of our return from China in 2001, Kaydi ended up in the ICU with a raging UTI, seemingly asymptomatic except for a high fever.  I wasn't going to go through that again!

The MD at GuangCi spoke some English and was really nice but Kaydi went more than a little nuts when they did a finger prick to take blood for a CBC (though her throat had become somewhat reddened, there wasn't really time to grow a strep culture and we were at a hospital).  Anyway, her white count was fine and the MD suggested it was merely a virus.  So, we were delivered to our journey home with best wishes and two types of Chinese medicine for symptom relief, but Kaydi refused to take them.  I added those to our handful of souvenirs!

To depart China, we took taxis to the Maglev train.  It was only an eight minute ride, but it was amazingly fast...it clocked a speed of 300kph.  Delivered to the airport, we did some final shopping and away we flew!

Zai jian, China...it was really a wonderful adventure!!!

Kaydi and Julia at the People's Square, Shanghai.