Shanghai!

Well, we made it.  The day of travel was largely uneventful -- thankfully.  In Dallas, after we landed on time, we caught the train to our terminal, and with only time for a very quick potty break by Troy, we boarded our nearly empty flight to China.  Seriously.  The flight may have been 1/4 full.  The beauty in that? We could spread out! I even got a few hours of sleep (unheard of!) lying across the seats in front of us.  It took us about an hour to clear immigration and get our luggage after we touched down.  We grabbed a cab, and after a somewhat hair-raising 45 minute ride ($32 -- a steal in my opinion since people at the airport who saw us as easy marks tried to get us to take their cars at nearly 3 times that! Ha! *I* did my homework silly scammers!) we got to our hotel.  I will have to take pics of the lobby.  Ah. WOW! It is gorgeous! How grateful are we for points?! The bell boy (yeah, it's THAT kind of a hotel) brought our luggage, and we ventured out.  We took a right instead of a left down Nanjing Road, so we missed the cool pedestrian street.  We got tired of looking for a place to eat and decided to stick with tradition.  McDonalds.  Sigh.  Yep.  We really did.  Tomorrow we'll hit the Shanghai food scene! It's just too hard to familiarize yourself with a city -- especially one of this size -- in the dark with virtually no sleep and having traveled for a full day.  But tomorrow, we plan to take Shanghai by storm. Well, we'll probably be a little tired still; maybe it will be more of a squall than an all-on storm. ;)

Before pics of our lodgings, though, can somebody...ANYBODY...please tell me something? If we turn off "Cellular Data" on our phones, we can't incur data charges, right?!?! If we do that and are connected to wifi, we are still safe, yay or nay? HELP! I would really hate to come home to $1000+ in data charges :-O Thanks in advance for the input!  Ok. Out for tonight!

What passes for fun on a LONG day of travel....

Sweet digs.

Sweeter view!