5/12/2017 Flight to Shanghai and Shanghai Art Museum

5/12/2017:  We had to leave our suitcases outside our doors at 10 PM last night, and get up at 5 for a 6:15 departure to catch our plane to Shanghai -- which all went smoothly.  However, Shanghai had heavy rains, and flights from Xi'an were delayed -- also we had to wait a long time for the bus to take us from the gate to the plane, so we were late leaving Xi'an, and then when we landed in Shanghai and had to descend from the plane to the bus to take us to the terminal, there was a deep, large puddle between us and the bus, and some passengers wanted instead to use the vans that were next to the plane, but they were reserved for crew, so that was another 1/2 hour, and (I'm told) cross words were exchanged.

I had my hiking shoes on, so didn't get v wet in the puddle.  We went to the Shanghai art museum, which is really vg (I stopped in the cafe because the lunch on the plane had been v small) -- beautiful early statues of the Buddha, beautiful paintings -- we only had 1.5 hrs there because some people had wet feet and (not unreasonably) wanted to go to the hotel and change shoes.

We were to see an acrobatic show & ate dinner in a (vast) adjacent restaurant.  The first 4 dishes were pork and / or seafood, but after a while some vegetarian fare emerged, which I was glad of.  I didn't enjoy the acrobats all that much because my knees were achy but that wasn't their fault -- they put on a good show, climaxing with 6 motorcycles inside a globe-shaped cage, doing vertical circuits.

The Astor hotel dates from 1840 -- I guess they're renovating it gradually, but (because of its vintage) there are lots of stairs to lug suitcases up, and I can hear the TV next door, but these are first-world problems, aren't they.

We have foibles.  One lady can't abide elevators.  One's vegetarian, and then there's quasi-kosher me, and another guy addressing people in Spanish all the time.  Time to break up and go home.