Shanghai Tan

Last week, I went back to Montreal after 6 months stunt at Shanghai, but only for a week, from 15/09 to 23/09. Mary and I didn’t feel any excitment before going, I had to work the day before, and we actually packed out baggage the morning before leaving. We had so many stuff to bring back, and we have a long to-do list for the short week, have to meet many people and do many paperwork… Not really vacation time!

So, at 11am we left home, taking the subway to switch to the high speed train (Maglev [磁悬浮] @ 430 km/h) to the Pudong airport, that would avoid any traffic problem. In the subway, suddenly Mary asked me “you said the flight is for 12:40 right?”, my reply was “I thought you told me that, I didn’t check… oops…” And for a moment we hoped at least one of us was right……. we were so unexcited that no one has confirmed the flight schedule before leaving! Luckly our assumption was right, we were on time for the flight. And I have to insist here again, Air Canada sucks big time, we were served instant noodle at one point, and honestly, that was the best thing we had during the flight, the other meals were horrible! There was practically no movies to watch since the screen is so badly positioned for us, and it was playing cartoon anyway. With Japan Airline each person has a screen in front of the seat, with several movies playing simultaneously, and some basic games also, that really does make the 13 hrs flight a little shorter. The only good thing about Air Canada is that the flight itinery is the shortest: Shanghai – Toronto – Montreal. Actually, flying between Shanghai and Montreal is really painful no matter what airline we took, unless maybe First Class would be better since we can sleep with a straight body.

When we got out of the Trudeau airport at 8:30pm, the first thing we noticed was the frest smell of the air. We took it for granted when living at Montreal, but now we really miss that, and the clear blue sky was so wonderful! It was good feeling to take a deep breath. We rent a Toyota Yaris from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, it is a cheap car, but no complain, it does very well for what it is worth. I would recommend this to anyone who only drive to work and back home, very economic in fuel and surprisingly good handling. Bravo Toyota!

We stay at Mary’s parents’ home, right in front of Parc Lafontaine. Early the morning I stand at the balcony enjoying the view and the fresh air. I can see the whole downtown and Mont Royal, and the park of course, clear blue sky, unlimited visibility. I took a few snapshot with a point & shoot camera, didn’t bring my own Canon 20D because I had too much to bring already…

Montreal downtown morning

Mont Royal and Parc Lafontaine

During the whole week we had to run like crazy, every day. It was good to see our family and friends once again, but we weren’t exactly in good shape. Wednesday we went to the long awaited French diner with Kim at Le Pégase, good wines and delicious dishes, but Mary were in such bad shape (because the alcohol of the night before) that she couldn’t really enjoyed the diner at all, I was ok but not perfectly fine neither. We had a lot of Pho (Vietnamese noodle), almost every lunch…

So, it was good to see people, but one week is way too short for a 12-hour jet lag. We were hoping to have time to enjoy several French meals, red wines and golf games, maybe next year….. We really miss our golf season, but we won’t miss Winter!

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 8:29 am and is filed under Scrapbook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.