London: The Fastest Train and the Longest Day

I'm back in London, and I've managed to stay awake until 9:30 PM GMT, so right now it's 4:30 AM in Shanghai.

Today has been the 2nd longest day of my life (beat by my day of travel between Malaysia and New York four years ago).....

The 20th of June began in a bar in Shanghai, near People's Square. I was there with Noelia and Belén, both Argentinians living in Shanghai. I connected with Noelia through a mutual friend in San Francisco, so on Friday night we went out for Sichuan food for my last dinner in China. Getting to and from the restaurant (and the bar afterwards) involved longs walks through the French Concession, which was fun to see at night.

The bar was close to my hotel, so I walked home, but not before stopping to buy some stir fried rice cakes from a street vendor near my hostel. By this point it was close to 1 AM.

I only ate about 1/2 of the noodles, then did some packing up, then eventually went to sleep around 2 AM. I woke up at 6:45, showered, finished packing, and then went out to look for a bit of breakfast. The street near the hostel was quite lively early on a Saturday - like my hostel in Kowloon, this hostel is near a street with lots of pet stores, and apparently 7:30 AM is a good time to go pet shopping, since many people were. But I also found a nice spot that sold cruellers, soy milk, fried sesame balls and other breakfast snacks. I bought a scallion flat bread, three sesame balls and a soymilk, then headed back to the hostel to check out and leave.

I took the metro to the Maglev train station. The Maglev, which connects the eastern part of Shanghai to Pudong Int'l Airport, is the fastest train in the world. However, it only got up to 300 kph on my journey - at other times of day, it goes over 400 kph. It was still a cool train though, and certainly an efficient way to get to the airport.

Airport check-in was a breeze, and Pudong Airport is quite big and nice. I used up my cell phone minutes saying goodbye to Leo and Kelly, had some dumplings and udon soup for breakfast part II, then at 11 it was time to fly to London.

The 777 was pretty comfortable, but full. But the seats on the 777 felt roomier than on the 747, so this flight was nicer. I watched 3 movies: A Beautiful Mind (I hadn't seen this, I thought it was good), He's Not That Into You (this ranged from good to nearly unbearable depending on who was in the scene - Scarlett Johansson was at the top of this spectrum, while Drew Barrymore was at the other end), and Jurassic Park (I'd seen this one before, but not in many year). I realized in the shower just now that not only do the first two movies star Jennifer Connelly, but they also both have scenes where she gets really angry, screams at the top of her lungs, and breaks a mirror.

I had the Asian Vegetarian meals this time - neither hot meal was very good at all, and the salad side dishes weren't nice at all. So even though it was vegetarian, it wasn't very tasty. The woman next to me had the normal meals, and they didn't look all that much better.

I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but at the moment I'm exhausted, so I'm off to collapse.